An Empirical Study of English Learning Attitude and Motivation of Ethnic Minority University Undergraduates from Yunnan Province, China 英语论文.doc
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1、An Empirical Study of English Learning Attitude and Motivation of Ethnic Minority University Undergraduates from Yunnan Province, ChinaAbstract: This research adopted empirical quantitative questionnaire survey and studied English learning attitude/motivation and their relationships with English ach
2、ievement of ethnic minority students in Yunnan, China. The participants were 837 ethnic minority students from two universities in Yunnan province, southwest China. The questionnaire, adapted from SLA Batteries of Gardner/Lambert (1972), consisted of 63 items concerning why to learn English. First,
3、we treated the collected data with SPSS factor analysis and descriptive statistics in order to explore the most important types of attitude and motivation and eight types of attitudes and motivations emerged. The order of the eight attitudinal and motivational types was arranged from the highest mea
4、n value to the lowest as follows: study intensity, extrinsic motivation, parents expectation, teaching factors, intrinsic motivation, integrative motivation, attitude to English native speakers and study anxiety. Second, Spearman Correlation indicated that the self- evaluated English achievement was
5、 positively and significantly correlated in order with integrative motivation and intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Key words: attitude, motivation, English achievement, ethnic minority university students1 Introduction1.1 The Background of The StudyThe socio-cognitive model, also calle
6、d the instrument model and integrative model, is initially put forward by Gardner/Lambert (1972). The intrinsic and extrinsic model is proposed by Deci and Ryan (1995, 2006) while the theory of FLL motivation is set up by Dornyei (1990, 2005). Noels and her colleagues (2001) introduce a new interpre
7、tation: a comprehensive model of SLA/FLL motivation (intrinsic/extrinsic/integrative orientation and motivation). Gao et al. (2003) hold that the empirical studies concerning FLL motivation in China have pursued the international models and extended models. They have probed into the function of moti
8、vations to promote language achievement and the correlation between motivations and other factors influencing the learners achievement (Wu et al,. 1993; Wen & Wang, 1996; Shi, 2000; Yang, 2002; Wen, 2003). Gao et al. (2003) investigated the types of motivation of the university undergraduates in Chi
9、na by using questionnaires. Some newly-established findings also appear in domestic study, such as Du (2004), Tang (2005), Ge (2006), Li & Yu (2008) and Rao & Wang (2009).However, there still exist some limitations in the studies of SLA/FLL motivation, for example, much research focuses on Han stude
10、nts(the mainstream ethnic group)rather than the empirical study on ethnic minority students. In recent years, some scholars and teachers (Wu & Gulizha, 2007; Huang, 2006; Yuan, 2007; Hu, 2007; Yuan et al., 2008) have made some discussions about the English learning motivation of ethnic minority unde
11、rgraduates and middle school students. But up till now, there is no specialized empirical study on English learning attitude/motivation based on large samples of ethnic minority university undergraduates from Yunnan, China.1.2 The Research QuestionThe present study is part of the research project gr
12、anted by the China Ministry of Education in 2009 which is entitled The Correlation between English Learning Attitude/Motivation and English Achievement of Ethnic Minority Students within the National Education Science in “Eleventh Five-Year Plan”. This study will adopt some western theories of SLA a
13、nd FLL motivation (Gardner/Lambert, 1972; Dornyei, 1990, Noels, 2001) to unveil the main types of English learning attitude/motivation and their correlation with the participants English achievement.2. The Research Methodology2.1 SamplingThe samples of this study were 837 ethnic minority university
14、undergraduates at two universities in Yunnan. Among them, 303 were male, 537 were female; the ethnic groups were up to 33. The top ten groups in number consisted of the Yi, the Bai, the Hui, the Zhuang, the Naxi, the Dai, the Hani, the Lisu, the Miao, the Lahu. The majors covered Liberal Art, Scienc
15、e, Economy, Politics, Law, Arts and Physical Education. Of the subjects, 202 majored in English, 47 were from workers family, 597 were from farmers family, 73 were from teachers family, 46 were from civil servants family, 46 were from self-employed enterprisers family and so on. 2.2 Instrument The m
16、ajor research instrument was the questionnaire adapted from Gardner/Lamberts (1972) and Gao et al.s (2003) Scales of English Learning Investigation. The questionnaire contained 66 questions related to English learning attitude and motivation; it also employed 5-point Likert scale with 1 being “stron
17、gly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree”. The overall reliability of the questionnaire (Cronbach ) reached 0.92 at last. Another instrument was the subjects self-evaluated achievement of English, the result of which was taken as English achievement index ranging from “good”, “average” and “poor” a
18、nd the statistics showed that these subjects respectively ranked into 10.5%, 55.2% and 34.3%.2.3 Data AnalysisAll the data in this study were treated with SPSS statistical data analysis system to conduct factor analysis, descriptive analysis and correlation analysis with the attempt to find out the
19、types of attitude/motivation and to reveal the correlation between the types of attitude/motivation and English achievement. 3. Result and Analysis3.1 Analysis of Types of Attitudinal/Motivational FactorsFactor analysis was applied twice to look into the sixty-three items concerning attitude/motivat
20、ion in the questionnaire to investigate the content validity. By principal components analysis, eight common factors were obtained in the first round of factor analysis of sixty-three items on the attitudinal/motivational questionnaire. To facilitate the labeling of the common factors respectively,
21、Direct Oblimin was adopted to revolve the coordinate axis. In the first round of factor analysis, KMO score was 0.916, which showed that the data were suitable to be analyzed, and Bartletts Spherical Inspection x2 equaled to 17683.32 (P=0.000), which reached the significant level and the data were s
22、uitable to undergo the factor analysis. Thirty-three unfavorable questions were deleted according to the result of the communalities and item classification after revolving the coordinate axis, factor load and concrete meaning. We kept the other thirty-three items whose structures were of distinctiv
23、e classification. In the second round of factor analysis, only the remained thirty-three factors were included which then produced eight common factors. At this time, the contribution rate of accumulative variance came to reach 52.57 (Table 1), and KMO was 0.877 and x2 of Bartletts Spherical Inspect
24、ion equaled to 7250.00 (P=0.000), which reached the significant level. After using Direct Oblimin method to revolve the coordinate axis, the labeling of different factors was listed below (Table 1): extrinsic motivation, study anxiety, parents expectation, teaching factors, study intensity, integrat
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