| Globalization is increasingly accelerated.With China’s consistent development in technology and economy,intercultural communication competence has become a necessity of talent and is in urgent need.Foreign language education in senior high school paves an important way for Chinese students to communicate with people from other cultures effectively and appropriately.As the main L2 language in senior high school,the society has put forward higher and more diversified requirements on English education.The latest National English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(ECS2017)specially emphasized cultivating students’ intercultural communication competence in English teaching.There are many “theoretic researches” on students’ ICC(Intercultural Communication Competence)from different perspectives,but few about the motivation of students’ intercultural communication learning.Although L2 learning motivation has also been studied in the field of English education for many years,there are few studies on intercultural communication learning motivation.In order to learn the current situation of senior high school students’ motivation in intercultural communication learning,and find out strategies to maintain and stimulate senior high school students’ motivation in intercultural communication learning,the author investigated 213 students from the classes in the three grades of Huanggang Foreign Language School.The research was undertaken to find out: 1)what is the current situation of the intercultural communication learning motivation in the selected senior high school? 2)What are the main factors influencing the selected senior high school students’ motivation in intercultural communication learning?To explore all these questions,the author mainly conducts a questionnaire investigation,which was designed to collect data for quantitative research and was designed according to D?rnye’s framework of L2 motivation.The framework was divided into three dimensions: language level,learner level and learning situation level.Based on the survey and interpretation of the research data,the major findings are summed up as follows:1)The current situation of the intercultural communication learning motivation in senior high school is: Compared with boy students,girl students are better motivated at“learner level” components and “language level” components.Students’ intercultural communication learning motivation shows no difference between Art Students and Science Students by subjects’ selection.Grade 2 students have the strongest motivation among the three grades.Among the three levels of motivation dimensions for the students in the three grades,Grade 2 students are the most motivated ones in the “learning situation level” components,specifically in the teacher-specific motivational components and group-specific motivational components.2)From both vertical and horizontal comparisons of the three-level,main factors which influence senior high school students’ motivation of intercultural communication learning are as follows: With horizontal comparison of the components in all the three levels,the components in “learner level” dimension influence the students’ motivation most in intercultural communication learning.In terms of the separate vertical comparisons of each level,for all factors in the dimension of “language level”,“students’ interest towards intercultural communication” ranked first in the learning motivation,whereas the “learning intercultural communication has a great impact on future life”ranked the last.For all factors in the dimension of “learner level”,the motivation of“students want to experience and use the knowledge of intercultural communication in real life” ranked first,whereas students also stated that they usually feel pressures and anxieties while learning the knowledge and skills of intercultural communication.In the dimension of “learning situation level”,the strongest motivator is “interests toward intercultural communication which are generated from teachers teaching styles,materials and other learning materials”,whereas the least important motivator is “learning intercultural communication knowledge from extra-curricular activities provided by their teachers.”According to the results,the author proposes some suggestions to help cultivate students’ motivation of intercultural communication learning in future English teaching and learning: offering well-designed extracurricular activities to supplement the intercultural communication learning time and meet students’ needs in intercultural communication learning;capturing the best period during the three-year period of high school intercultural communication teaching and learning under the current unchangeable test-oriented education environment;enriching intercultural communication teaching and learning material to meet the needs of different genders;creating authentic cultural knowledge environment for intercultural communication;setting learning goals and improving learning strategies for students to reduce their anxiety in intercultural communication learning. |
