The Extrinsic Motivation of Bilingualism

Hsu (2001) in the paper entitled “School-university partnerships in action: Collaborative exploration between a university researcher and an elementary EFL practitioner” stated parental belief influences the educational aim of the kindergarten.

The teaching strategy of the kindergarten administrator towards bilingualism is as follows: In the allocation of subject and learning time, English is given the same weight as the other courses. A suitable English learning environment is created in kindergarten. The educational aim of kindergarten is to meet the parents’ needs.

Since parents think that learning English is important and the sooner the better, so the attempt to merge English and other courses into one at this early childhood stage in order to give parents peace of mind is an urgent mission for kindergarten.

In addition, Qiu (1990) in an experimental study of bilingual teaching in a northern city of Taiwan pointed out that the motivation of the majority of participants to join English learning was driven by their parents.

Tsao (1993) conducted a survey about children learning English in the Taipei area. The finding of the research demonstrated the motivation of children in learning English. Those children who learned English at an early stage expressed that: If I learn English early, I can perform better than others. Also, I can be a good child to meet my parents’ anticipation to be somebody exceptional in the future. The motivation of such kind of children learning English is not interest-oriented; rather, it is for the material benefit that they can get in the future.

In this study the researcher also identified the relationship between parental belief and the parent’s socioeconomic status; the parental belief that is influenced by socio-economic status has a crucial impact on the children’s motivation and attitude in learning. Those studies dealing with the issue of childhood English learning are mainly from the angle of the impact of parent’s background (gender, age, educational level, and occupation) on the parental belief in childhood English learning.

References

Hsu, Y.K. (2001). School-university partnerships in action: Collaborative exploration between a university researcher and an elementary EFL practitioner. The Proceedings of Tamkang International Conference on TESOL: Methodology and Pedagogy in the Age of Globalization. Taipei: Tamkang University.

Qiu,Y.M.邱億明(1990)。國小雙語文教學實驗計畫。新竹：國立科學工業園區實驗高級中學。

Tsao,S.S.曹素香(1993).大台北地區兒童英語教學現況調查研究。 北師語文教育通訊，2 ，49–61。

Originally published at http://poeticmindfulness.wordpress.com on August 15, 2020.