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6. Conclusion
Two sides of the cross Taiwanese Strait separated and governed individually by sixty years. The social development is different and so is the educational development.
However, both sides with the same language, the same races and the same culture, some things are deeply rooted in the similar situation. The difficulties on learning foreign languages are similar. How to learn from each other, how to help each other on learning foreign languages efficiently and how to reduce learners pressure are the issues that both sides have to pay attention. Both sides have to support each other in competition and create an atmosphere of win-win situation.
From the experience and observation of the interviewers in this study, we got some points approximately. And after the comparison, we captured that there are some identical and different English learning motivation and results between students in Taipei and Shanghai. Here I present the comparison of the factors of: (1) Personal factors: interest, personal experience, future career, (2) Family factors: parents, siblings and other family members, (3) Schools factors: classmates, teachers, and schools, (4) Learning materials and tools (5) Social factors: social points of view.
(1) Personal factors: interest, personal experience, future career
The interviewers in this study revealed that Taiwanese students do not totally study due to external stress and English learning is based on interests although some of them don’t have perfect good grades. Instead of studying English just for passing the high school entrance examination, students in Taipei emphasize more on speaking or using English to enrich their lives. These conform to The Course Outline and its teaching goals which Taiwan Ministry of Education stipulated. Taipei’s junior high school students’ English learning motivation conforms to Garner’s concept of motivation - both integrative orientated and instrumental orientated. Inversely, most of the interviewers in Shanghai indicated that seldom students learn English because of interest. Students are instrumental-orientated learners by Garner’s concepts of learning motivation. The overpopulated pressure lead students must study harder if
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Shanghai is huge. Students must be adopted into the key high schools first, and then students can have possibility to enter prestigious top universities. Even promising over the years of reform and expansion of universities, the society still attaches great importance to prestigious and elite universities. English is one of the subjects that decide whether students can enter the top prestigious universities.A potion of Taiwanese parents still encourages their kids to study abroad but they respect kids’ choices. In fact, recent years, Taiwanese face the choices whether to study in Taiwan, in China or in other countries. On the other side, with the rapid economic growth, middle-class in China increases. It enables more middle-class families to send their children to study abroad. Studying abroad is a pride to family.
The population of studying abroad is increasing with years. The pressure of entrance examinations is the second reason which leads many wealthy families to send their children to study abroad directly or study in foreign schools’ branch campus in China.
It is very trendy now that foreign universities cooperate with domestic universities to offer international courses in English and international diploma. In fact, universities in Taiwan, like Cheng Kong University, have the similar cooperation program with foreign university. Whether to study abroad or study in international schools in the domestic China, students have to learn English. All the reasons enhance the motivation of learning English.
Most students in Taipei have many experiences to travel abroad. The traveling experiences arouse students’ motivation in English learning. Students witness how important it is to learn foreign languages. The traveling experiences also widen their views and increase their international perspective. The students’ exchange activities also facilitate students’ interests and independent abilities. Most Taiwanese students stress the pragmatic English ability more than their school grades. Students in Taipei agree that it will be helpful for people when they make foreign friends, travel, do other culture exchange activities and go further studies. But making foreign friends is not the main motivation to irritate students’ interest. On the side of China, the rapid growth of China’s economic development recent years lead more and more people have experiences to travel abroad. But not many students have the chances to use English as a tool to communicate with foreign people in other countries. English
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is still an important subject that schools ask them to learn.
But there is a same situation that junior high school students in both Taipei and Shanghai are quite young, their life style is simple and seldom have opportunity to talk to foreigners in English. In Taipei, students have chances to talk to foreigners mostly in cram schools. Parents want kids to develop their speaking proficiency so they send kids to cram schools. Few families take foreign friends to their homes.
In Shanghai, The interviewers of junior high school students said they don’t have the chance to speak to foreigners. Some public schools and private schools have foreign teachers. And the same as in Taipei, students in Shanghai have to go to cram schools for English learning and other talent learning for entering key high schools. With the rapid growth of economic development, it’s easier to meet foreign neighbor in students’ neighborhood in Shanghai recently. It is for sure that people are motivated to learn English especially when they see more international people around them.
(2) Family factors: parents, siblings and other family members
Many parents in Taiwan worry about school English is too simple, so parents manage the environment like sending their kids to cram schools or urge kids to use computer and Internet to learn English; and hope to cultivate children's interest in learning English. Parents hope their kids not only learn English for good grades but also develop their interests in English learning. Presently parents don’t give much pressure on kids’ learning. Although eventually junior high school students in Taipei have to face the entrance examination, parents hope their kids learn English happily and use it spontaneously. They hope their children grow up happily only if the student has correct behavior and personality. Contrarily, in China, the population is huge, the competition is fierce. One wants to be the excellence among the huge population must work harder than others and efforts earlier. English learning must start earlier, too. In order to cultivate kids to be the elite in the future, some parents even send their three-year old baby to boarding schools to reinforce their competitiveness and start earlier than other kids. In Shanghai, parents urge their children to study all the time. Parents concern the school grades very much.
Parents in Shanghai pay much money and attention on kids’ academic performance.
Students devote their time on textbooks the most. But recent years, parents start to
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notice the English speaking proficiency.
Whether kids’ motivation of English learning is affected by their siblings is individual.
Some kids affect by their siblings but some do not affect each other. Parents have the concept that everyone is individual and unique. On the other side, the one-child policy makes students in Shanghai have no siblings. They are not affected on the school performance by their siblings. But the only one child could be the center of whole family. Parents and grandparents concentrate on them. The only one child students may not stand the pressure of academic performance.
(3) Schools factors: classmates, teachers, and schools
From the interviewers in Taipei, we can see many students are influenced by their classmates or good friends. If their good friends are good in English or encourage them to learn English, this will be one of the motivations in learning English. In Shanghai, the interviewers revealed their situation individually.
In Taipei, teachers are willing to be students’ friends but sometimes teachers meet the challenge from students. English teachers in Taipei are trained to use Communicative Language Teaching in the classroom. The teaching approach of Communicative Language Teaching emphasize on the ability of communication.
Teachers have to encourage students to speak out more than to focus on accuracy.
Differently, teachers in Shanghai are more authoritative than in Taipei. Teachers emphasize the accuracy on English learning. They focus on grammar structure.
But the younger students who now are in junior high schools feel that teachers sometimes teach English with games and competition in class to stimulate their motivation.
In Taipei, schools have irregularly or non-irregularly scheduled vigorous activities to promote students’ learning. Most schools regulate students to read English magazine in order to strengthen students’ English proficiency and their views out of the textbooks. Many schools hold various vigorous extra English activities like speech contest, storytelling contest, English songs contest, drama contest or spelling bee contest to promote the English learning motivation. Decades ago, Taiwan actively
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simplifying the course leads to the problem that students’ basic academic competence is reducing. When Taiwan's efforts to reduce the academic pressure on students, do the students really reduce the pressure? Or, Taiwan just weakens the competitiveness of the next generation? Further more, the policy of simplifying courses and reducing pressure cause junior high school students only have to learn more 1200 words, but senior high school students have to learn over five times than that; thus, it is difficult to bridge courses for senior high school students.Junior high schools in Shanghai sometimes held activities to encourage the motivation of learning English. The private schools, international schools, or international division and the bilingual schools of course pay much more attention on English. There are also branch campuses of foreign schools in Shanghai. They have whole language classes teaching every subject in English. Some junior high schools and senior high schools have ancillary “study abroad classes”. These kinds of schools cultivate students with strong English ability to study abroad since high schools. The existence of this kind of “study abroad classes” partially is because the strong pressure of entrance examination in domestic. There are English learning institutes like New Orient English Institutes which provide one-to-one tutor courses to help junior high school students study each school subjects since grade 7 in order to prepare the high school entrance exams earlier. To help students to be more competitive in English, some prestigious junior and senior high schools in Shanghai strictly practice bilingual education; students have classes in English in physics, biology, chemistry, geography, history and other subjects. We can see students and schools show the strong determination on English learning on hooking up with the international and enhance their competitiveness personally and nationally. The multi-education system support parents various choices and it has its historical reasons. No matter boarding schools, private day school, public schools, international schools or the cooperated schools which combined the domestic schools credits and foreign school credits, all ranks of schools have strong determination and ambition to study English well. Since 2004, Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Hubei and other provinces and cities designed listening test on the entrance examination according to different local conditions of English listening comprehension in order to ameliorate their so called “deaf- mute English”.
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(4) Learning materials and tools
Mostly the interviewers in Taipei think the textbooks are interesting. The pictures and illustrations are enough. The issues are new and very close to students’ lives.
Textbooks attract students to read the contents. But interviewers in Shanghai hope the textbooks can have more fun and attractive to students. They hope their textbooks can be more vivid. Commonly, students in Taipei and in Shanghai are interested in cultures around the world.
According to the interviewers in this study, students in Taipei learn English through textbooks and other supplementary materials such as magazines, English songs, English movies, TV news, computers or other media. Teachers lead students to sing in class. Sometimes teachers play video in class and use movies as one of the materials to learn English. On the other side, among junior high school students in Shanghai, the life style is simple. They follow the rules that parents, teachers and schools ask them to do. Exactly, they spend most of their time on school subjects.
Many students have to learn special skills like music instrument, arts, dancing and so on to prepare for the entrance exams of university. Students don’t have much their free time.
(5) Social factors: social points of view
Identically, both societies in Taipei and in Shanghai consent that English have been the global language. With the wave of globalization aggrandizes, no matter in Taipei or in Shanghai, from personal to government, societies in both sides emphasize the importance of English learning and make efforts on it. English learning also bring enormous business opportunities to the private. With foreign-funded enterprises or joint ventures have entered China, China's opening policies of international trades brings English speaking foreigners into the neighborhood of common Chinese citizens zone and supplies large number of employments’ opportunities to the Chinese people with English language ability. China’s economic development promotes its society learning English crazily.
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Taiwan joined to WTO only several days after China. The emphasis on English learning is with no doubt since it has known the importance of language from the colonial period by Japan. China's accession to WTO will inevitably place more contact with the international. China’s accession to WTO affects the model of English learning. English is not only a tool to get high grades in China but also a tool to communicate. Chinese start to notice the pragmatic importance of English speaking proficiency.
These years China runs some world-class convention and exhibition such as the Beijing Olympics Games, Shanghai World Expo and the upcoming Asian Sports Games in Guangzhou attract more international business and tourists. The opportunities to see foreign faces are more than ever. People are aware of the spoken English is as important as the English test. On the other side, Taipei grabbed the opportunities of holding the 2009 Deaf Olympic Games and the Flowers Expo in 2010 to exhibit itself in the international.
When we examine the result of English learning of junior high school students in Shanghai and contrast Maslow's theory, we can get that the hierarchy of needs in Shanghai is quite similar to Taipei since the economic development in Shanghai is accelerating and the life standard is increasing. The interviewers revealed lots of students study hard in order to improve their life standard although there are numerous rich families that cultivate their children to study in private high quality schools or study abroad in order to firm their status in the society. Meanwhile, stable economic base led to parents in Taipei pay more attention to children's individual development and the development of interest. In addition to cultivating children’s learning capacity and the interests in life, parents in Taipei pay more attention to character education and the experiences of self-esteem and self-actualization.
When we contrast Vroom’s Expectancy Theory, we can easily find that the strength of English learning motivation in Taipei and in Shanghai is different. Expectancy theory emphasizes the relationship between motivation and reward. Different reward expectancy and different personal goals lead to different motivations.
Taiwan advocates Harvard Professor Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, therefore, people’s focus is placed on individual development and
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respect for individual self-realization and the development of creation and innovation.People uphold not only money. Under the care of their parents, Taiwanese young people most are not exposed to financial pressure. Taiwanese Students’ pressure and expectancy of improving their families’ lives is not as strong as the students in China.
The motivation by studying hard to get rid of poverty among students in Taipei is not as strong as the students in Shanghai and this leads the expectancy among students in Taipei is not as strong as the students in Shanghai. According to this study, the students in Taipei for sure have to learn English for the sake of getting good grades in entrance examination, but there are evidences showed that one of the purposes students learn English hard is self-expression in order to enrich their colorful lives.
Most students in Taipei have at least three times traveling abroad experiences. This encourages them to learn the international language well and in order to hook up with the international, to understand more about the world, to make friends with people around the world, to enrich their life, and certainly pursuit the highest level to achieve self-realization. However, the retard of Taiwan’s economy and political troubles lead its people lose a little bit motivation in English learning but leap toward west to China anxiously or expectantly.
In Shanghai, the wealth gap between millionaires and the poor is big. Under the one-child policy, the “little emperors” who also live rich, but most people own the average and general standard of living. Many people still expect to rely on studying hard to stand out in a large population and to meet the external extrinsic rewards, especially the outsiders which are from other provinces. China’s economic is speeding up amazingly, and its foreign trade activities are vivacious. These make people aware of the importance of language application. Mastering in English language can bring good work, and good work can bring reward and reach to personal goals. Of course these all come from the efforts in students’ studying period.
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motivation is also clear. When we applied Vroom’s theory and contrast to the result in this study, we have clear effort to prove that students study English for good performance, and good performance can expect good rewards to achieve personal goals. High economic growth rates in China leads students to have high expectations and hopes. They have strong expectancy and they believe they can access to success as long as they try very hard on studies or on work. The value of English in Shanghai is high and this leads students to regard it as a tool to get the
motivation is also clear. When we applied Vroom’s theory and contrast to the result in this study, we have clear effort to prove that students study English for good performance, and good performance can expect good rewards to achieve personal goals. High economic growth rates in China leads students to have high expectations and hopes. They have strong expectancy and they believe they can access to success as long as they try very hard on studies or on work. The value of English in Shanghai is high and this leads students to regard it as a tool to get the