A Study On Identity Of 136 American High School Students Of Chinese Descent And Its Impact On Chinese Learning Motivation

Identity is "sense of belonging" that an individual or group has to the group they belong to.The identification of second-language learners with the target language society affects their second language learning motivation.Based on identity theory and learning motivation theory,this thesis takes the Likert Scale of Identity of American High School Students of Chinese Descent and the Likert Scale of Chinese Learning Motivation of American High School Students of Chinese Descent as research tools,takes 136 American high school students of Chinese descent as the research object,and uses a combination of questionnaire analysis and interview research to investigate and analyze identity of 136 American high school students of Chinese descent and its impact on Chinese learning motivation,hoping to provide a scientific basis for formulating corresponding strategies to guide the positive identity changes of American high school students of Chinese descent,so as to take measures to effectively improve their Chinese learning motivation.After analyzing the data of the questionnaire and the materials of the interview,the result shows that,the overall level of identity of the 136 American high school students of Chinese descent is not high.Specific to four dimensions,level of ethnic identity is the highest,followed by cultural identity and value identity,and level of language identity the lowest.Moreover,the following five factors have an impact on identity of these 136 American high school students of Chinese descent,including:gender,age,city of residence,length of learning Chinese,and whether have been to China before.In addition,Chinese learning motivation of the 136 American high school students of Chinese descent is not very high.Specifically,the instrumental motivation is the highest,and the integrative motivation is the lowest.Finally,correlation analysis shows that,there is an obvious positive correlation between identity of Chinese American high school students of Chinese descent and their Chinese learning motivation.More accurately,the correlation between language identity and the integrative motivation is the most significant.Based on the above analysis,it can be concluded that: these 136 American high school students of Chinese descent have two kins of identity dilemma,that is language identity dilemma and value identity dilemma.And these two kinds of identity dilemma have a significant impact on their motivation to learn Chinese.In this case,some suggestions can be puts forward: language and culture policy and platform,parents of Chinese descent and Chinese teachers.