Relationship between the Chinese Language Classroom Environment and Students' Motivation to Learn Mandarin in Malaysia

Palanisamy K Veloo ,Wang Yang,Gurnam Kaur,Parmjit Singh

doi:10.13189/ujer.2019.071710

Palanisamy K Veloo , Wang Yang + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2019.071710

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Abstract

Associations between the nature of Mandarin Classroom Environments and Malaysian Chinese Independent High school students' motivation to learn Mandarin was investigated using a perceptual measure approach. A sample of 460 grade 8 students from 4 Independent Chinese High schools were involved in the study. The Mandarin Classroom Environment Inventory (CLCEI) (Chua, 2004) was used to investigate teachers' and students' perceptions towards their Mandarin classroom learning environments in six dimensions, namely 'Student Cohesiveness', 'Teacher Support', 'Involvement', 'Cooperation', 'Task Orientation' and 'Equity'. Students' motivation to learn Mandarin was examined using the Chinese Language Motivation Scale (CLMOTS) (Soh, 1993). Two statistical procedures, simple correlational analysis and multiple regression analysis, were used to examine the relationships between students' motivation to learn Mandarin and the nature of their Mandarin classroom learning environments. The results show that students' motivation to learn Mandarin was positively correlated with all the six learning environment dimensions. Multiple regression analysis show that students' motivation to learn Mandarin was associated with three dimensions of the learning environments, 'Teacher Support', 'Task Orientation', and Equity. Task Orientation had the most significant association with students' motivation to learn Mandarin.

Highlights

Introduction and BackgroundStudents have spent close to 15,000 hours in classrooms by the time they complete high school (Fraser, 2002; Velayutham, 2012)
The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of a sample of Grade-8 students from several Independent Chinese High Schools, of their Mandarin classroom learning environments in six dimensions, namely ‘Student Cohesiveness’, ‘Teacher Support’, ‘Involvement’, ‘Cooperation’, ‘Task Orientation’ and ‘Equity and their relationship to students’ motivation to learn Mandarin
Student Cohesiveness refers to the extent to which students know, help and are supportive of one another; Teacher Support refers to the extent to which the teacher helps, befriends, trusts and is interested in students; Involvement refers to the extent to which students have attentive interest, participate in discussions, do additional work and enjoy the class; Cooperation refers to the extent to which students cooperate rather than compete with one another on learning tasks; Task Orientation refers to the extent to which the teacher completes activities that have been planned or completes tasks that need to be performed in order to meet certain goals, or certain performance standard; Equity is the extent to which students are treated by the teacher

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and BackgroundStudents have spent close to 15,000 hours in classrooms by the time they complete high school (Fraser, 2002; Velayutham, 2012). What happens within these classrooms, such as the nature of the teaching and learning and the interactions experienced by students, are likely to have a profound impact on students’ outcomes. School effects research has tended to rely heavily on the assessment of subject related academic achievement and other learning outcomes (Fraser, 2007). Academic factors alone do not provide a complete picture of the overall academic process that occurs in the classroom. Classroom learning environment is an important educational area that has received much attention from educational researchers. Educators tend to rely heavily on achievement and other outcomes which do not provide a complete picture of the educational processes within the classroom (Fraser, 2002)

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