| With the deepening of educational reform,great progress has been made in foreign language education in ethnic minority areas.However,due to the influence of the traditional teacher-led teaching mode and the particularity and complexity of trilingual learners,there is still a certain gap between foreign language education in ethnic minority areas,especially in ethnic languages and Chinese.In English Curriculum Standards for Ordinary Senior High Schools published in 2017 and revised in 2020,it is pointed out that “The English curriculum advocates creating as many opportunities as possible for students to use the language in a real context.Students are encouraged to discover language rules,master language knowledge and skills step by step,and develop self-regulated learning ability through experience,practice,participation,inquiry and cooperation under the guidance of teachers.” The purpose is to emphasize the importance of students’ classroom engagement in the learning process.For many years,scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of research on students’ engagement in class,while there are relatively less studies on students’ engagement of senior high school students in ethnic areas.Therefore,this study aims at high school students who are taught in Mongolian languages in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and theirengagement in understanding the current situation of English teaching in Mongolian high schools.According to Chinese Scholar Kong Qiping’s classification of learning engagement,the study divides learning engagement into three dimensions: behavior engagement,cognitive engagement and emotional engagement.The research questions for this study are: 1.What is the overall situation of Mongolian senior high school students’ engagement in English learning? 2.Are there any differences in students’ engagement in English learning among different grades? If yes,which dimensions do they lie in? 3.What are the factors that may influence students’ engagement in senior high schools? In this study,questionnaires,interviews and classroom observations are used to investigate W Mongolian Middle School in Chifeng city.255 students from three classes of senior one and senior two are selected to conduct this study.A total of 255 questionnaires written according to Dr.Kong Qiping’s definition and classification of learning engagement are distributed and totally recovered.In addition,6 class observations including listening class,reading class and grammar class and 6 interviews of Mongolian students are conducted to make a contribution to this study.Finally,SPSS25.0 is used to analyze the collected data.The results of study are as follows: 1.Mongolian high school students were at a moderate level of engagement in English learning.2.The behavior and emotional engagement of the Senior Two students were less than that ofSenior One students.While the cognitive engagement of Senior Two is a little more than that of Senior One.3.The following aspects are main factors that affect Mongolian senior high school students’ engagement in English class: the relatively weak English foundation;the fact that English accounts for only one-third of the language test results in the College Entrance Examination and less attention on English learning;quality of teachers and the difficult degree of learning materials.On how to improve the engagement of Mongolian-speaking senior high school students in the classroom,this study tries to give some suggestions to schools,students and teachers.strengthening the training of Mongolian teachers is as necessary as developing curriculum resources.Besides,students’ learning motivation should be stimulated and autonomous learning ability need to be enhanced.This study aims to enrich the theory of classroom participation and the theory of trilingual acquisition by studying the English classroom participation of students in Mongolian teaching schools.It can be used as a reference for improving the quality of basic foreign language teaching in schools with minority languages as teaching languages. |
