Study On Mandarin Learning Motivation Of Indonesian Chinese Students With Different Language Backgrounds

As the relationship between countries in the world continues to strengthen,Mandarin has become one of the most popular languages in the world.Learning motivation is a very important factor in learning a foreign language.Indonesia as a multi-ethnic country and due to historical factors,Indonesian-Chinese are distributed in different cities and each region has a different language background.Medan and Surabaya are two of the largest developing cities in Indonesia with similar populations of Chinese descent and similar educational systems.In this study,Medan and Surabaya were selected as the research objects to explore the influence of different language backgrounds on students’ motivation to learn Mandarin.The study mainly adopts the survey reseach method to investigate students’ main motivation types,Mandarin learning attitudes and expectations of Mandarin learning.In this analysis,the author came to the conclusion:1.Medan students with Chinese dialect communication habits have a stronger internal motivation while Surabaya students use Indonesian to communicate in their daily lives,the pressure of their surroundings makes their external motivation stronger.2.Both Medan and Surabaya students believe that Mandarin is an international language and they hope to enhance their ability to communicate more in Mandarin.The new generation of Indonesian Chinese lack of the intergenerational inheritance,which make them had a lack interest in Chinese culture.3.With the increasement of social needs,Indonesian Chinese believe that learning Mandarin is beneficial to their future development(doing business with Chinese).Surabaya students have a relatively higher instrumental motivation than the students in Medan.In conclusion,the author gives some suggestions to improve the Mandarin motivation of the two cities:attaching importance to teacher’s attitude,strengthening teacher-student relationship;creating a good learning atmosphere,enhancing learning interest;developing interesting teaching materials,enhancing students’ internal motivation;carrying out Chinese cultural activities in the two countries,enhancing the understanding of Chinese culture;conducting teaching evaluations,and understanding students’ willingness in learning.