Abstract:

More and more Chinese students seem to be complaining to their instructors that they do not like English or they think English is too difficult to learn for lacking interest and motivation when they enter universities. Many students just seem to be motivated to pass the university entrance examination in English and not to be particularly interested in learning for its own sake, especially learning English for its own sake. Nonetheless, they often are very smart and hardworking students, or at least most of them seem to. Diagnostic surveys can seek out whether the students’ English level has some relationship to their interest in improving pronunciation. This diagnostic may suggest a method to correct any problems they may have, especially when their main problem seems that they lack interest and thus motivation. The problem seems a lack of motivation and perhaps a lack of what Piaget called a “felt need.”

Thus, the problem presented in this research is to discover motivation strategies for effectively teaching pronunciation of English by Chinese students according to the set requirements of the Chinese educational system, and to seek out whether those identified motivation strategies in teaching pronunciation really affect Chinese students’ interest in learning English.

Keywords:

Pronunciation teaching, learning motivation, Chinese educational system.