Chinese students’ motivation to adopt distance learning of the Russian language

Abstract

Introduction. Currently, restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic have not yet been fully lifted in the People's Republic of China and students studying in Russia periodically switch to distance learning. The purpose of the article is to study the specifics of students' motivation to use distance technologies for teaching the Russian language using internationally recognized methods of measurement and statistical data analysis. Materials and Methods. The Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS) measuring materials for studying the specifics of the educational motivation of students of the Ural Federal University (hereinafter referred to as UrFU) from the PRC for the use of distance technologies for teaching the Russian language were created for the AttentionRelevance-Confidence-Satisfaction (ARCS) structural model. We studied the relationship between the personal data of students (gender, age, year of study, educational program, additional language training and the results of measuring educational motivation (IMMS) for the use of distance technologies for teaching the Russian language and its structural components: attention (ATT), relevance (REL), Confidence (CON), Satisfaction (SAT).The study involved 673 UrFU students from the PRC, who had experience of long-term distance learning under restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Statistical processing of the measurement results was carried out using the structural equation modeling method Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). A confirmatory and exploratory factorial analysis of the obtained results was carried out using the SPSS software tool, including the AMOS module. Results. The developed IMMS questionnaire was validated by confirmatory factor analysis of IMMS measurement results using the AMOS module of the SPSS software tool. The method of exploratory factor analysis revealed statistically significant relationships between the indicators of students' educational motivation for using distance technologies for teaching the Russian language (IMMS) and its structural components with the personal data of the respondents. The gender of the student and the presence of parallel additional language training were found to have the strongest influence on learning motivation (girls are more motivated than boys). The gender of the student and the presence of parallel additional language training (regression coefficient r = 0.61) have the strongest influence on the structural component of learning motivation relevance (REL). Conclusion. The results of the study showed a high level of motivation for distance learning of the Russian language among UrFU students from China which is due to the effective design of educational materials. It is shown that when developing motivating teaching materials for distance learning, it is necessary to take into account the gender composition of trainees and the availability of parallel additional training in the subject.