探究小学生英语学习动机的培养

论文总字数：35020字

摘 要

随着英语教学改革的深入，小学英语发展到了一个全新的阶段。提高小学生的英语素质，以适应未来社会发展的需要，小学英语教学处于非常重要的地位。但小学英语教学中依然存在一些问题。小学生在英语学习中遇到困难，他们就对英语学习不感兴趣。众所周知，在所有影响学习者学习的因素中，动机和兴趣是两个关键的因素，因此培养学生对英语学习的兴趣和树立正确学习动机，对小学生的英语学习起着至关重要的作用。

本文介绍了小学生英语学习的现状，随后结合小学生英语学习过程中存在的问题，研究了培养小学生学习英语的兴趣、动机的方法，探究了提升小学生英语学习能力的策略。

关键词: 小学英语; 兴趣培养; 学习动机; 学习策略

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Meaning of Motivation to Study Primary School English 2

3.1 Definition of English Learning Motivation 2

3.2 Analysis of Pupils’ English Learning Motivation 3

3.3 Cultivation of English Learning Motivation of Elementary School Students 4

4. The Methods to Raise the Interest of Primary Pupils in Learning English 6

4.1 The Effect on the Efficiency of English Learning in Different Ways 7

4.2 The Ways to Raise the Interest of Primary Students in English 7

4.3 Teachers Impacts on the Formation of Pupils" Learning Strategies 9

5. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

The interest is helpful to impel students to study efficiently. It is easy to find that every student is very curious and hardworking when they first meet the English where they hope they can get high scores. As a famous educationist says every primary student goes to the school with beautiful dreams. Interest and motivation are significant to the education in primary school.

However, complex grammar in English learning process increases the difficulty of people to learn English. Then a series of problems during the study will appear, which leads to the decrease of interest in study. At present, some of pupils are poor at English speaking and learning, less efficient and lack of confidence, which can be solved by making them be interested again. Therefore the real way to improve the quality of the English study is to emphasize the roles of interest and motivation in primary education which is the most useful way to make the students active and interested in English.

This thesis consists of five sections:

Section One gives a brief introduction of present situations of primary English learning and the significance of the thesis.

Section Two presents the connection between the motivation and success in study.

Section Three deals with the motivation to study primary school English which includes definition, analysis and the meanings.

Section Four is presented with the methods to raise the interest of pupils in learning English. Through the research, some learning strategies are put forward.

The last section is the conclusion, which is composed of major findings of the research, implication, limitation of the study and suggestions for further study.

2. Literature Review

Compared with all the affective causes, motivation is one of the key causes. What is more, the theory is widely accepted by the public which is raised by Holec. Standards of New English Course published in 2001 especially points out that the English education in primary school should be started from the interest and the motivation and make students learn on their own (Su Caijuan, 2009:7-13).

Motivation has much to do with success in English study. Those who possess more active motivation usually set high standards for themselves. Therefore, the motivation of primary students is of great significance and it is important and meaningful to study the relation between motivation and success in English study (Zhu Minjie, 2013:83).

In the teaching process, the teachers can’t be concentrated on teaching if they long for achieving good results. A expert once said that each teacher taught knowledge which may be not accepted by every student. Therefore, while teachers are aimed at improving students’ English learning level, the root of the problem is to find a way to get students motivated to accept knowledge taught which means they should stimulate students’ motivation. There are a variety of types of English learning motivation from different perspectives. We will make analysis to find approaches to enhance students’ English learning motivation to improve their English teaching effectiveness.

3. Meaning of Motivation to Study Primary School English

As a hypothetical concept learner motivation emotional factors, so far Motivation has been widely regarded as a vital factor, which has an impact on language learning. There are plenty of factors which can influence the students to learn English, but motivation to learn is regarded as one of the most critical factors. Therefore, training students’ English learning motivation is important.

3.1 Definition of English Learning Motivation

Motivation of study is the inner cause for the students to go on academic activities which is the great power to lead students to learn. The motivation that isn’t a simple single structure is the strength to push students to learn which can be called “motive power of learning”. Academic activities are caused by a system consisted of all sorts of power causes, in which needs to learn, senses to learn and interest are the psychological ones. During the academic activities, it needs not only the desire to learn but also the goal to learn. The goal to learn can be named predisposition of learning as it guides the direction of study. The goal and the need to study should be consistent to be the leading cause of the motivation of learning.

Learning motivation can be divided into two categories: internal motivation and external motivation. The internal motivation referring to the motivation of learning does not need external incentive. Its main characteristic is the ability to sense and sense of self-decision, such as primary school students learning interest, curiosity and etc. which all belong to the internal motivation. The external motivation refers to the motivation caused by external inducement, such as the recognition by teachers and the rewards from parents which will arouse their interest in studying English.

English learning motivation referring to the learners" desire to learn English and driving force is the physiological state of the learner with an initiative and enthusiasm in learning English (Ma Cuiru,2014:96-97). Learning motivation is launching, maintaining and guiding the motivation of learning which is the core of the learning process.

3.2 Analysis of Pupils’ English Learning Motivation

At the elementary level, students" awareness level is low where it is difficult to consciously set themselves goals of learning and maintain their goals of learning in studying activities. In the primary school, students" learning activities, learning goals and objectives may be passive indeed but they often change the learning aims and objectives (Hui Qiuping, 2009:58-59). It is decided by the pupils" needs and the instability of the interests. The needs contribute to stimulating learners to produce motivation. When needs are not satisfied, it will promote people to seek to meet the needs of the object which will generate activities motivation. When the need promotes people to take part in an activity with a goal, requirement is people"s motivation. The pupils" learning motivation with the needs of instability often transforms, such as today they might study all the time in order to get a small prize, while tomorrow they are afraid of criticism and failures. Therefore, learning motivation of pupils is instable.

According to educational psychology, human interests and needs with a certain level of motivation are always linked. The vast majority of pupils have an active attitude in learning English. Of course, due to the characteristics of students’ physical and mental development, there is a phenomenon that disjointed words and deeds appeared which cause increased unawareness and lack of positive action initiative. Motivation is a prerequisite to learn English while English learning motivation of children directly affects their learning level. Only feeling confident and having interest in learning, they will make their efforts to learn.

Students through participation in learning activities in the growing process, constantly learn new things, how to understand and how to solve problems that make students obtain successful experience, which can strengthen the learning activities motivation, thus forming a point to the task of learning cognitive drive. This cognitive drive acquires new knowledge and information and solves new problems. It has differences from extrinsic motivation through learning activities, yet it belongs to intrinsic motivation which are needs of the primary school students to strengthen and make up. According to the students learning motivation’s characteristics, to strengthen and make up for the weak aspects basing on primary extrinsic learning motivation and further stimulate the internal motivation can make the learning behavior and learning activities in primary schools to maintain and continue to strengthen. The internal motivation has stability characteristics which can enduringly push pupils to keep learning and get fun from it.

3.3 Cultivation of English Learning Motivation of Elementary School Students

The development of motivation needs particular predisposition to switch the condition of the study from negative into active. Only when primary students are active interested in English, they will get good and stable grades.

In the English learning activities, internal factors play the decisive role in the learning motivation,

Such as the need for learning, desire, curiosity, interest, emotion, belief, ideal, self-esteem, confidence, ambition, honor and so on, all of which can be transformed into learning motivation. Therefore, teachers should take these factors seriously in order to fully stimulate students’ motivation of learning English.

Paying attention to the substance children carry around is another good way to stimulate their interests. What children put in their book bags sometimes can reflect their interests. For example, a boy whose pencil case always has a miniature basketball may have a special interest in basketball. A child who always carries notebooks and pencils with pictures of horses may regard horses as her favourite animal. If a six -year-old child who carries and reads books without any pictures, he or she will have probably developed advanced cognitive skills.

3.3.1 Analysis of the relation between motivation and English study

Motivation is dialectic with learning, which means learning can produce motivation while motivation pushes ones to learn. They are connected between which the relationship is a mutually reinforcing one, not a single-track relationship. Motivation has the function of promoting study which makes students with active motivation more successful. In the opposite, more success can cause more active motivation. In a special range, motivation can be apparently beneficial to the improvement of study, especially on the projects that one can manage. If the motivation is in the suitable condition, the result of learning can be the best and vice versa.

3.3.2 The role of motivation on learning outcomes

Some studies on motivation giving power do not rely on the internal driving force of the meeting to strengthen. A large number of learning in human life can occur by chance in the absence of any clear learning intention case. However, to effectively carry out the long-term meaningful learning, motivation is absolutely necessary. Lots of psychologists consider that the moderate summon of motivation can have great impacts on learning. If it is too weak, the initiative of study can not reach the peak while it is too strong, the study will be less efficient. During the study of primary English learning, each student should achieve their balance point and find out the most suitable way to study, while the point is moving according to the outer world and students themselves. Therefore, one should make his study in an active condition by adjusting himself.

Motivation is too strong or too weak, not only for disadvantages of learning, but also for maintaining. In the difficulty of different tasks, the impact strength of motivation influences solving the problem. Educational practice and educational psychology experiments have shown that motivation can promote the learning activities to stimulate students’ interest in learning, maintain a certain arousal level and point to specific learning activities.

Of course, there is a difference among the students in their motivation which is the ability to solve problems. It is easy to be faced with difficulty in an academic activity, while students with wrong motivation often get emotional diffidence which causes them to give up what they are doing while those with correct motivation can do better in their mood and get success.

It is shown in some research that motivation and the result of learning are not directly connected, between which is the study. The behavior of certain study is not only affected by the motivation, but also by these series of subjective and objective causes like basis of learning, guides from the teachers, ways to learn, habits of study, intelligence, personalities and their condition of health. As a result, the complex relation between motivation and effects can be seen only when motivation, behavior of learning and the effects of study are taken into consideration. Briefly, motivation in learning activities can play the parts of causing, maintaining, reinforcing and adapting learning. Good motivation is of great benefit to the learning of English.

3.3.3 The importance of training pupils in English learning motivation

As an important emotional factor, motivation is one of the main factors restricting students in learning English which is necessary to solve the problem that stimulates students" motivation to learn. Motivation plays an irreplaceable part in English learning.

When students learn English, it is not difficult to find the English learning of poor students whose intelligence level is not low are short of the interest in learning English, confidence and informing a good habit of English learning. At the beginning of learning English, most of them who have some interest in English are curious about new things; they produced a low level of learning motivation. When the close of the direct learning motivation has experienced a series of difficulties, such as hard to remember English words, recite English texts and etc., students" learning motivation could be unable to strengthen and sustain their English learning. Thus, these students have anxiety and fear of learning English who become pessimistic and anxious deepened. After a while, the students of English will produce a sense of fear and rejection some of which due to the introverted are shy to speak English and afraid of being wrong and being laughed by classmates. They lack the confidence in learning English, lack the motivation to learn and lack strong learning desire and motivation for which learning achievement falls down. Instead, a good student with a strong zeal for knowledge and learning motivation can learn English actively involved in the whole process of English learning, even if occasionally he encounters difficulties and setbacks in learning, for which they have good study motivation that can adjust learning methods and summarize the learning experience where learning and performance will continue to improve.

English is not only a subject but a language. Primary students can learn a kind of new language well because of their strong ability to accept and good deformability. However, primary students can be influenced by the outer causes during the progress of learning English, which will make them go away from the correct ways and less interested in English. Therefore, it is important to guide them correctly and make them full of right motivation and interest in learning English in order to improve their English learning.

4. The Methods to Raise the Interest of Primary Pupils in Learning English

A increasing number of people learn English, but not everyone can speak English like a native application freely. It is necessary to have certain skills and methods to develop their interest in learning English, especially for students who start school.

4.1 The Effect on the Efficiency of English Learning in Different Ways

It is said that Forewarned is forearmed. The study also needs plans, methods and good habits. Different methods have different effects on study. In the primary time, it is a good time and of great importance to develop a good habit of study. It can be found that students with good habits can learn well while those can not.

Methods of study contain not only the ways to study but the basic behavior and acknowledge of finishing a task. The traditional way to learn is that the students absorb what teachers tell, things in the books, personal understandings of questions, and many times of trainings. In spite of the different effects of the ways, students who accept this kind of study are painful. They are considered as Test Machine and vessel of knowledge which means they lost their free time and space as well as their creativity and thinking (Jiao Xiaojun, 2011:87).

4.2 The Ways to Raise the Interest of Primary Students in English

Students rarely use English conversation in daily life, so their ability of using English is not too good. With the learning content and learning difficulty increasing, some teachers pay less attention to the teaching method of force, causing the students learning English very difficult. Their motivation for learning English is gradually losing; so much as some even hate learning English. In order to rekindle the students" enthusiasm of learning English and improve their efficiency of learning English, to lay a solid foundation for their future learning and a higher level of English, primary school English teachers should apply some appropriate ways to inspire students" motivation for learning English.

(1) Songs and nursery rhyme. Children are born with the love of singing and dancing. A cheerful, rhythm, funny songs often enable them to become active in the classroom. Once the active classroom atmosphere, students" learning interest also will increase, as well as they can deepen their understanding and impression of knowledge learned. Before every class, three minutes can be spared for the children to sing and dance, which can make the atmosphere active and the children will be interested in what will be told next. Thus the ability of each student will be given fully played. English songs can not only provide lots of authentic language material, but also can arouse the pupils’ learning interest and cultivate learning autonomy.

For example, teachers in the process of teaching new knowledge can show the students a song which is related to the knowledge. The benefits of doing so are not only to close the distance between teachers and students, but to make active pupils quickly into the English learning atmosphere. For another example, when first exposed to English, teachers usually teach the sentence type "What is your name professor?” Students often forget this sentence answer. Teachers can base on the Chinese song "what is your name?" by. Such as:” What is your name? What is your name? My name is, my name is, "Through this hilariously funny question - answer-style song, it is easy to focus students" attention which make them fast master the sentence to achieve a consolidation effect.

(2) Stories in class, learning in the listening. Through speaking about western culture, celebrity stories and anecdotes and attracting students with rich contents of the novel, the teachers should impress the students with flexible and diverse forms and introduce students to the world of English learning. Stories are commonly attractive to children which they can be used to make the class interesting and it works well. Stories can give children a sense of foreign language, which make them familiar to all the words and the structure of sentences. The teacher can adapt the story with the words, the sentence, and goals that he will teach which make the children feel easy and relaxed to gain the new things. It helps them to be interested in the new things as well as it will helpful for children to understand what is in the story with the body language from the teacher and they will be dying to know what will be told next which should be studied on their own. In English teaching classroom, teachers should are supposed to not only use the oral language and written language to transfer the information, but also take advantage of the silent body language.

(3) Face to face communication, learn in the act. Children are also born with the gift of act. In accordance with the psychological characteristics of the students with fun, active, teachers can design some "performing" link. Some verbs such as learning, let students performing on stage, and then make others guess. This situational approach helps students to enhance interest in learning in real and vivid scene. Teaching English like this kind of way is just to change the past, dull situation which can be used in the school. The teachers encourage them to take part in stage playing in English and require them to speak fluently and loudly with some actions. The rest students serve as raters who will give remarks and comments on the show. Children like to show themselves through which they will do an initiative study and get good marks.

(4) Game garden, learn in activities. As Sigmund Freud said the game by the pleasure principle actuation is a source of satisfaction. Game is an important part of children’s study life. They enjoy showing themselves in games. Putting games into class is a good way to make children interested in English, to make them thirsty to know and to compete with others. They will be high in games which will help them to understand the sentences and passages, speak more, image more and react quickly. For example, according to their psychological characteristics of the students" competitive features, teachers can design various games. Teachers can hold some games in the classroom to attract students to take part in the learning process, such as: read the word game, spell the word games, quiz game, mimicry game and etc. Competition in individual, group, two groups of male and female students and other diversified situation, the winning individual or group in the spirit of praise is given priority to and supplemented by material incentives.

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