Study on English Learning Motivation of the Middle-aged and Elderly Learners in China

As China's society ages, the number of middle-aged and elderly English learners is gradually rising. Understanding this group's English learning motivation is the basis for developing effective teaching strategies and designing appropriate teaching content for them. This paper is aimed at describing the current condition of motivation for middle-aged and elderly English learners in China. Adopting questionnaire as the main research method, this paper targets the middle-aged and elderly people in China who learn English as a second language, to discover what are the main learning motivations of this group and what types can these motivations be sorted into. Also, this paper proposes effective corresponding teaching strategies to improve the teaching quality of this target learning group at the end. By document analysis and questionnaire investigation, this paper discovered that the main motivations are the demand for communication, social responsibility, and self-improvement. Thus, teaching activities for middle-aged and elderly learners should think highly of the communicative function of English and provide opportunities for this group to practice.