Abstract: This paper investigates the language behaviors of minority students from some local colleges, and with the aid of questionnaires, observations and interviews, analyzes the motivation of their language behaviors. Minority college students generally believe that Chinese is better than their mother tongues in terms of language superiority, vitality, attractiveness and their personal preference. They regard Chinese as a tool to help them fit in or fight for academic progress or work promotion, their mother tongues as an important symbol of national identity, and adopt behavioral strategies such as cooperation, compromise or conversion to help them achieve their goals. This paper then explores the causes for those language behavior motivations, and gives some suggestions to minority college students on the use and inheritance of their mother tongues.

Key words: Minority college students, Language behavior, Motivation, Suggestion