On The Cultivation Of Students' English Learning Motivation In Vocational Art Schools

Learning motivation refers to the internal process or internal psychological state that stimulates individuals to carry out learning activities,which maintains the learning activities and directs learning behaviors towards certain goals.The development trend of internationalization,the challenge of knowledge economy in the new century and the amazing progress of knowledge information network all pose greater challenges to English learners at all levels.It is true that cultivating students' practical language application is a challenging task for English teaching in secondary vocational schools.From the perspective of students' lifelong learning and social needs,the cultivation of learning motivation is undeniably crucial.As we all know,due to the need to take into account the study of art majors and cultural courses at the same time,art school students face the conflict between professional and high school cultural study.Generally speaking,most secondary school art students' have strong curiosity and energy,practical ability and internal needs in self-awareness.Nevertheless,it can't be denied that their English foundation is generally weak,their English learning ability and receiving ability is relatively poor.So their participation in various classroom teaching activities is low,and it is difficult for them to get teachers' class intentions.Therefore,many secondary vocational students lack English learning interest and motivation,and the teachers also feel that English teaching in secondary vocational schools is rather challenging.Admittedly,how to stimulate the enthusiasm of English learning and cultivate the motivation of English learning in art secondary vocational school students have not received enough attention in the academic circles.There are few researches on English teaching for art secondary vocational school students,and even fewer targeted researches on their English learning motivation.In view of such situation,this study aims to investigate the current situation of English learning motivation of art secondary vocational students,analyze and discuss the existing problems,and then explore how to effectively cultivate the English learning motivation of art secondary vocational students.This study aims to address the following issues:(1)What are the main problems in the current situation of English learning motivation among art secondary vocational students?(2)What are the reasons for the lack of motivation for learning English among art secondary vocational students?(3)How to cultivate the English learning motivation of art secondary vocational students?This research is based on the theories of motivation and foreign language teaching,the theory of self-efficacy,attribution and humanistic learning.With reference to domestic and foreign researches on motivation,through questionnaire survey,interviews and other research methods,this paper investigates the current status of English learning motivation of art secondary vocational students,and analyzes the existing problems.The subjects in this research are 80 art secondary vocational students from grade 16 art class and grade 16 music class of an art school in Qingdao.In this research,80 questionnaires were issued and 80 questionnaires were collected,all of which were valid.The questionnaire covers four major aspects of learning interest,learning purpose,self-efficacy and attribution characteristics,and contains 36 questions.The English learning motivation questionnaire for art students designed in this study mainly refers to the English learning motivation survey report of Wang Wei(2015)for secondary vocational students.And the learning purpose,attribution and self-efficacy from the questionnaire survey are taken for reference,while some other issues such as learning interest and the influence of teachers are added.Meanwhile,the questionnaire is adapted by referring to Cao Shaoqing's(2013)investigation report on secondary vocational students' English learning motivation.In this study,20 students from the above two classes were interviewed.During the research,in order to cultivate students' learning motivation,innovative teaching strategies,teaching modes and targeted learning strategies were adopted for music class of grade 16,.Meanwhile,case analysis was conducted for the class.Through analysis and discussion,the research findings can be concluded as the follows: first,through the questionnaire survey,it is found that these interviewed art secondary vocational students have problems such as lack of interest in English learning,unclear learning purpose and insufficient learning motivation in common.Second,some students attributed their low scores to insufficient efforts,while most students attributed the reasons to the influence of the outside world and the difficulty of English.Many students attribute low self-efficacy to past failures and limitations on their potential.Therefore,this study believes that students' inability to objectively correct attribution and low self-efficacy are the fundamental reasons affecting students' English learning motivation.Third,teachers' professional quality,teaching attitude and evaluation of students also have a great impact on students' learning motivation.Fourth,the pre-test data show that music class of grade 16 has a lower level of learning motivation than art class of grade 16,and students' performance is significantly worse than that of art class.Through the empirical study on the motivation of English learning,English learning enthusiasm of the students of music class of grade 16 has been significantly improved.Their overall academic performance has also been improved,and the relation between teachers and students becomes more harmonious.This research believes that for the special group of art secondary vocational students,the cultivation of interest and motivation in English learning is of great significance.Teachers should integrate the content of teaching materials and set reasonable goals according to students' professional characteristics.Teachers should also help students develop right attribution,encourage their desire in cooperative learning and inquiry learning.Besides,the students should be evaluated objectively and impartially.Through empirical research,this study holds that the reform of classroom teaching mode can help promote and improve students' learning initiative and enthusiasm,so as to improve the quality of English education and teaching in art secondary vocational schools,as well as the students' English ability and performance.It is sincerely hoped that this research can contribute to the promotion of English teaching in art secondary vocational schools.