The Relationship Between Language Attitude And English Performance Of Grade 8“MinKaoMin” Uyghur Students In Nanjiang

Language attitude is the reaction of social psychology and the recognition and evaluation of a certain language or language variation.The study of language attitude in China has made a lot of achievements,especially in minority languages.However,there are few studies on the language attitude of middle school students in minority areas and there is also a lack of specific theories to guide students’ English language attitudes in minority areas.This paper takes the Grade 8 "Min Kao Min" Uyghur students in southern Xinjiang as the research object,the author intends to explore the relationship between students’ English language attitude and their performance.This study takes Gardner’s socio-educational model and expanding motivational theory as the theoretical support,using questionnaire survey method,interview method and statistical methods of descriptive analysis,correlation analysis,variance and linear regression as the main research method,and attempts to answer two questions: the first is what are students overall English attitude? The second is from the motivation and gender two aspects to analyze what is the correlation between students’ English language attitude and their academic performance?Based on a survey of 115 students from the third middle school in Dongcheng,Kashgar,the following results are obtained: 1.The students’ overall attitude towards English is not particularly positive,and the reason is students have negative attitude towards two items in language attitude.2.From the specific view,there is a significant positive correlation between “attitude towards English and English course” of language attitude and students’ performance.3.There is also a significant positive correlation between language attitude and students’ English learning motivation.Language attitude affects students’ learning motivation,and learning motivation is correlated with students’ performance.4.There is no significant difference among gender in language attitude.Finally,according to the survey results and students’ situation,the corresponding suggestions for the future teaching are put forward.