A Study Of The Role Of Attribution In Reading Comprehension Among Chinese EFL Learners

The thesis presents a study of the role of attribution in English reading among Chinese college students. The purposes of this study are to investigate the development of Chinese EFL learners'attributions for their perceived success and failure in second language reading and to clarify the relationship between the learners'reading proficiency levels and their attributions. It is specifically designed to address the five questions: the first question is concerned with the participants'beliefs, the second question deals with participants'feedback source after reading, the third one is related to factors underlying the learners'perceived attribution for success or failure in reading in English, the fourth one is associated with the relationship between perceived attribution for success or failure in reading in English and proficiency levels, and the last question is involved in the differences existing between skilled and less skilled participants'attribution.This thesis is based on the extant theories and empirical evidence concerning attribution and reading processes. Attribution in this study is to explore how the Chinese EFL learners find the success or failure in reading, and the discovery of causes and effects is at the heart of science.In order to test these five problems, a reading comprehension test and a questionnaire of the students'attribution are conducted. The experiment was implemented among first-year non-English major college students at Xuzhou Engineering Institute. The actual number of participants of the experiment was 98, and only 84 questionnaires were valid.For the first question, 57.1% of the participants reported they read English just"so so", and 39.3% of the participants thought they did not read well, or they performed"very bad"in reading despite a lengthy learning history, only 15.5% of the participants thought they read well. For the second question, 26.2% of the participants attributed their success or failure in reading to"the comprehension of the test", 20.2% of the participants attributed their success or failure in reading to"teacher feedback", 15.5% of the participants attributed their success or failure in reading to"grades", 14.3% of the participants attributed their success or failure in reading to"comparison with others", 13.1% of the participants attributed their success or failure in reading to"confidence of reading", 9.5% of the participants attributed their success or failure in reading to"sense of achievement", but only 1.2% of the participants attributed their success or failure in reading to"peer feedback".For the third question, the results of the factor analysis indicated the presence of five factors: environment, ability, text difficulty, effort, and task orientation. It is clear that these factors play a meaningful role in the participants'attribution for failure or success in second language reading.For the fourth question, there is significant difference between perceived attribution for success or failure in second language reading and reading proficiency level. For the fifth question, the high group attributed success or failure to ability, environment, effort, text difficulty and text orientation more than the low group, especially in terms of ability and effort.The results of the present research contribute theoretically and pedagogically to the fields of L2 reading and English language teaching in China. Theoretically, the present study is the first questionnaire-based study which has focused on the role of attribution in L2 reading among Chinese university students. This research may provide some consideration or information for the subsequent researches to concern more on the investigation of the attribution in reading comprehension among Chinese EFL learners.Pedagogically, although the participants in this study were a small sample of Chinese EFL learners, it was clear that despite their lengthy learning history, many of them still felt they could not read English well. Teachers should know that a large percentage of their students may feel a general sense of failure when reading English. Especially for students with lower reading proficiency, it would be advisable to provide them with considerable guidance. Some new ideas are needed to increase their willingness to read. The findings of the present study also have implications for teachers and educators involved in the design of textbook materials for classroom instruction. In short, the present research has important pedagogical implications for second language association and foreign language learning, especially for English language teaching and learning in China.Due to the complicated nature of the reading and attribution theory, this investigation suffered from some limitations in conceptual, methodological and other aspects. There are some problems the present researcher was unable to address properly and which remain to be answered in this field of psycholinguistic research. Therefore, suggestions to conduct further studies are put forward in order to facilitate a more consistent, coherent picture of attributions on Chinese EFL Learners and to elicit more generalizable conclusions from an aggregate of future results.