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Ⅱ. Differences Between Boys and Girls in English Learning
2.1 Difference in Motivation
Students’English learning motivations are different. According to the survey, some students learn English for loving it, some for loving English culture, some students want to go to university for further education, and some for parents’pressure imposing on them. There are different motivations for male and female students in English learning. According to the theory of motivation in psychology, there are two kinds of motivations for English learning:learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation. The students of learning goal orientation tend to pursue learning course. They are happy to acquire new knowledge. However the reason for the students who is of performance goal orientation learning to learn English is to prove their ability. The improvement in English is a big encouragement for themself. However, knowledge is not important for them and this is a kind of external motivation. In this study, we use motivation questionnaire to test 178 middle school students from longquan middle school in ChengDu city.and interview with 27students to explore their motivation in English learning. The questionnaire was pided into two parts:outside motivation and inside motivation. Inside motivation includes interesting, hobby, etc. Extrinsic motivation refers to the purpose of further studies, receive awards. We listed all types of motivation in the paper for students to choose.
Table 1 the motivation of girls
number of people
reasons like English Like the English culture College and good grades expectation from school and parents Uncertain
number of people 31 39 15 10 5
Percentage 70% 25% 5%
From table 1 we can found that the motivation of 25% of girls to learning English is extrinsic motivation. 70% of the girls are inside motivation, the rest of students are not very sure about the reason of learning English. They learn English under the supervise of school teachers and parents and they are not sure whether they like English or not.
Table 2 the motivation of boys
number of people
reasons like English Like the English culture College and good grades expectation from school and parents Uncertain
number of people 11 8 35 10 14
Percentage 24.5% 57.6% 17.9%
From table2 we can find that the motivation of 57.6% of boys to learn English is extrinsic motivation. 24.3% of the girls are inside motivation, the rest of students are not very sure about the reason of learning English.
Something can be seen from the above tables, most girls motivation to learn English is inside motivation. Most of boys learn English is due to external reasons, not the English itself. The rest of the students are not very sure about the reason of learning English and they learn English just because they have to complete tasks from their parents and teachers. Teachers should pay more attention to this part of students and cultivate their internal motivation to learn English, so that they can understand the reasons for learning English. Only In this way can they learn English harder.
2.2 Difference in Academic Performance
Investigation shows there is significant difference between male and female students in academic performance. Firstly girls’ grades are usually higher than boys. Secondly,for the distribution of English achievement, the proportion of girls Ranking in front is higher than boys, and the proportion of boys Ranking in the back is higher than girls. We have investigated two classes of longquan middle school in ChengDu city and we found that their English achievement distribution is imbalanced. There are 14 girls in the top 20 students from high to low of their exam results in one class and there are 15 girls in the other class. While There are 11 boys in the last 20 students from back to front of this class and there are 11boys in the other class.