An Empirical Research On Junior High School Students’ English Motivational Self System(EMSS) And Their Engagement In English Learning

Motivation is an important factor affecting the learning effect.As an important factor affecting second language learning,the motivation of second language has been an important research field in second language acquisition research for many years.Since Gardner,a representative of the social psychology school,began to study second language motivation in the 1950 s,this field has experienced several stages.In the new century,D?rnyei has integrated the achievements in the field of second language acquisition and put forward the L2 Motivational Self System(L2MSS)from the perspective of “self”,which has injected new vitality into the study of second language motivation.Learning engagement is an important concept in the field of education and has received more and more attention in recent years.There have been a lot of researches on L2 Motivational Self System,mainly on college students in China,and few on the correlation between the two.Based on the theory of L2 MSS and combined with the research results of learning engagement at home and abroad,this study uses questionnaire survey as the main research tool,supplemented by interviews,to make an empirical study of 165 junior middle school students from the third grade of Changchun No.98 middle school.The research questions are:(1)What are the levels of students’ EMSS in terms of ideal L2-self,ought-to L2 self and L2 Learning experience?(2)What are the levels of students’ learning engagement?(3)What is the relationship between EMSS and learning engagement?Descriptive research results show that:(1)On the whole,junior high school students have a strong EMSS.Among the three dimensions of the system,junior high school students have the strongest Ideal L2 Self,followed by L2 Learning Experience and have the weakest Ought-to L2 Self.(2)Junior high school students’ learning engagement is very good,which also shows that they have a positive attitude towards English learning.Both cognitive engagement and behavioral engagement are very active in class,but the students who participate in cognition have a higher degree of learning engagement.Specifically,in behavioral engagement,students who study individually have the highest degree of learning engagement,while students who avoid learning have a lower degree of learning engagement.In cognitive engagement,the students of surface learning have a high degree of learning engagement.(3)From the related analysis,we can draw some conclusions as follows: There is a significant positive correlation between junior high school students’ EMSS and learning engagement.On the whole,the stronger the junior high school students’ EMSS is,the higher their engagement in learning is.From the perspective of the relationship between EMSS and behavioral engagement,cooperative learning method,emphasized under the new curriculum standard concept,can stimulate students’ EMSS.From the perspective of the relationship between junior high school students’ EMSS and cognitive engagement,students who have surface learning have stronger EMSS.Therefore,according to the above results,some suggestions will be given: teachers should adopt various methods to improve students’ ideal L2-self;Teachers should adjust teaching methods and pay attention to students’ basic knowledge according to students’ engagement.Teachers should also use more new teaching methods in English teaching.