A Study On English Learning Motivation Of Tibetan Senior High School Students In Qinghai

A good deal of evidence indicates that students’ motivation play a critical role in their academic success. Motivation provides the primary impetus to initiate learning a second language and then becomes the driving force to sustain the long and often tedious learning process. Without sufficient motivation, even individuals with the most remarkable abilities cannot accomplish long-term goals, and neither are appropriate curricula and good teaching enough on their own to ensure student achievement. Moreover, Tibetan students face a trilingual education: Tibetan is their mother tongue, Chinese is their second language, and English is their foreign language, so their English learning context is different from that of students whose mother tongue is Chinese. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the general situation of Tibetan senior high school students’ motivation for learning English. Meanwhile, based on the analysis of primary research data, this thesis aims to illustrate the implications of trilingual education, and provide some suggestions to Tibetan senior high school English teaching and also education policy in Qinghai.This mixed-method study draws from a data sample of 367 Tibetan senior high school students from 3 Tibetan nationalities high schools, in Hainan, Huangnan, and Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures in Qinghai Province. The quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire(based on Gao Yihong 2003), including 29 items weighed by a five-class Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”, and an open question at the end of the questionnaire. These items are classified into three elements – desire for learning English, motivation orientations and motivational intensity. Additionally, seven subcomponents of motivation orientations were identified as intrinsic motivation, instrumental motivation, learning situational motivation, social responsibility motivation, going abroad motivation, exam-oriented motivation, and self-achieving motivation. Subsequently, 367 copies of motivational questionnaire were collected and all of these are effective. Epidata was applied to input data, and SPSS 17.0 was employed to analyze data. The qualitative data is conducted through individual interviews; altogether nine Tibetan students were interviewed via email and questions provided on paper. The interview questions and the survey questionnaires were provided in bilingual form(Chinese and Tibetan), to facilitate students’ understanding. The statistical results revealed the following aspects.Firstly, for the general situation of Tibetan senior high school students, the most influential factor for Tibetan students’ English learning is social responsibility motivation as the mean score of this factor is 10.86; self-achieving motivation and intrinsic motivation is the second. The “going abroad” motivation scored lowest, with an average score of 6.11. Meanwhile, statistical results showed that Tibetan students do not put much effort into learning English, according to their low motivation intensity. This phenomenon was also demonstrated in the open question.Secondly, this study examines few significant differences between the English learning motivation of Tibetan and Han senior high school students. Therefore, the comparisons reveals that the most affective three factors relating to learning English for both rural Han and Tibetan students is intrinsic motivation, self-achieving motivation, and social responsibility motivation. For rural Han students, the least influential factor is the instrumental motivation, whereas for Tibetan students, it is exam-oriented motivation.Thirdly, for the comparison of motivational intensity, some similarities between Tibetan and Han students appear. Both Han and Tibetan senior high school students have low motivational intensity. They are unwilling to spend time and energy learning English.Fourthly, the last part of the questionnaire is a supplemental open question so as not to omit any factors that influence Tibetan students’ English learning motivation. So these factors can be summarized as follows: too much academic burden and pressure, lack of self-confidence, teaching methods, school management, teachers’ personalities, text books, and the College Entrance Exam(here after CEE).Finally, the interview data reveals that English learning motivation has a direct influence on Tibetan senior high school students’ life decisions. Furthermore, education policy is not the main factor for Tibetan graduates’ demotivation; they have high expectations for learning English, and they were instrumentally motivated.