A Study on the Motivations and Attitudes of Chinese Students Towards Learning Two Foreign Languages in Junior Middle School

A few junior middle schools in China have encouraged students to learn another foreign language besides English and set specialized classes for this group of people. Some students choose to join this kind of class at the cost of gaining much burden as they have one more compulsory course than others. Drawing on qualitative research, the researcher used both questionnaires and interviews as methods to determine their motivations. Furthermore, this study aimed to investigate their attitudes towards this multi-lingual education based on their personal experience. Data were collected from undergraduates and postgraduates who have learnt two foreign languages in their junior middle schools. Results indicate that a wide range of people decided to do so since mastering a foreign language is an additional skill that can increase their chance of accepting better higher education. Most participants considered they benefited from multilingual teaching in junior middle school, believing that it will draw more and more attention and thus further develop. However, there are also some participants who held a negative attitude, so this study also gives some advice towards its future.