A Study On The English Learning Motivation Of Left-behind Children In Rural Junior High School In The New Era

In the new era,rural Left-Behind junior high school students in China are confronting multifaceted predicaments in learning,among which issues of English learning are particularly prominent.With the increasing importance of English,learning English well has proved to be an inevitable choice for every junior high school student.While motivation,to a large extent,plays a decisive role in second language learning,which contributes to numerous studies on English learning motivation conducted by multitudes of researchers.Howbeit,only a handful of studies on English learning motivation focus on rural left-behind children,among which extremely few studies have been carried out based on self-determination theory.It’s noteworthy that,self-determination theory,regarded motivation as a dynamic continuum,provides new perspectives for studies on motivation.For that reason,this study attempts to,from the perspective of self-determination theory,concentrating on rural left-behind junior high school students,inquire into the following three main motivational questions: 1)what’s the current situation of English learning motivation orientations and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs among rural left-behind junior high school students in the new era? 2)what’s the hidden relationship among personal background differences of rural left-behind junior high school students and English learning motivation orientations along with the satisfaction of basic psychological needs? 3)what are the implications to internalize motivation in English classes according to the data analyzed? Basing on the principal questions adduced above,the author distributed the questionnaire including the General Information Part,English Learning Motivation Scale,and Basic Psychological Needs Scale to 276 junior high school students in F middle school to fill in,and then randomly invited 4 students and 1 junior high school English teacher to conduct face-to-face interviews.After the questionnaires and interview records are collected,the questionnaire data are analyzed through SPSS 25.0.Through the normality test,the questionnaire conducted T-test and ANOVA was used to explore the relationship among personal background differences and English learning motivation orientations as well as the satisfaction of basic psychological needs.The findings have manifested that there are seven motivation orientations in all(namely,amotivation,external regulation,introjected regulation,identified regulation,intrinsic motivation-accomplishment,intrinsic motivation-knowledge,and intrinsic motivation-stimulation),among which external regulation,intrinsic motivation-knowledge,and intrinsic motivation-achievement are the chief motivation orientations.Therein,in the dimension of amotivation,the average value of male students is higher than that of female students,and the average value of the type of “tutoring by myself” is higher than that of other tutoring types;secondly,the satisfaction of basic psychological needs of rural left-behind junior high school students is on the low side,among which,the sense of autonomy and competence satisfaction is slightly higher than relatedness satisfaction,the sense of autonomy satisfaction of boys is lower than that of girls,and the relatedness satisfaction of the type of “both parents work outside” is lower than that of “one of the parents work outside”.Basing on the findings of the study,the following feasible measures are put forward to ameliorate the satisfaction of basic psychological needs and to boost the internalization of learning motivation in English classroom: 1)democracy-orientated classroom and "scaffolding" teaching mode should be carried out;2)“the zone of proximal development” for students and both “i” and “1” can be taken into consideration;3)language learning “community” and emotional support is supposed to be provided.Five chapters compose this thesis: the first chapter functions as an introductory prologue,which mainly sets forth the research background,research purpose,significance,and the overall structure of this paper;the second chapter concerns literature review,hoping to further comprehend the concepts of Left-Behind Children,English learning motivation and their corresponding research at home and abroad;the third chapter is about the research design,which expounds the theoretical underpinning of the research,and puts forward research questions,introduces the research subjects and research instruments;the fourth chapter mainly deals with inputting data,analyzing,reasoning,inducing,drawing conclusions and discussing the related conclusions;the fifth chapter,consists in the research findings of this study.The feasible measures to improve the satisfaction of basic psychological needs and to internalize learning motivation in English classrooms have been scrutinized.The last chapter of this thesis is about the conclusion.