A Survey On Oral English Attribution Orientation Of Non-English Major Graduates

Causal attribution refers to the way by which people analyze and explain others'as well as their own behavior outcomes. This is a process in which the question"why"is deeply explored to get an answer. This theory originates in 1950s, beginning with Heider's cognitive theory of na?ve psychology. Then, Weiner, on the basis of former researchers, revises and develops his self-attribution theory which later becomes very influential for the later researchers. Weiner, in his theory, classifies the attributions of academic success or failure of people like effort, ability, task difficulty and luck etc. into three dimensions: locus, stability, and controllability. According to the function of the attribution theory, researchers divide attribution into adaptive or positive attribution and maladaptive or negative attribution. The former has positive influence to learners'behavior while the latter has negative influence to attribution which will hinder learners'motivation and personal effort.Although attribution is of great value to foreign language learning, it has not yet caused adequate attention in foreign language education at home and abroad. So far, the study in attribution in China's English language learning is mainly targeted at the primary, secondary school students and undergraduates, with little study on those graduates who have high academic ability and there is very rare attribution study on a specific language skill. This thesis intends to make an investigation into the oral English attribution orientation of non-English major graduates'in order to help improve oral English learning and teaching.Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been adopted in the research including the interview and questionnaire. Nine subjects are interviewed in order to understand the differences between successful and unsuccessful students and to help design the questionnaire as well. Then 150 non-English major graduates of 2007 in Huazhong University of Science and Technology participated in the survey with a 37-item questionnaire, which is designed based on related attribution theory and oral ability development model as well as the interview. The Cronbach alpha coefficient of the questionnaire is 0.8921, which shows that the questionnaire has high reliability. There are three major findings of the study. Firstly, the oral English self-evaluation of the students of the non-English major graduates is almost balanced, with almost equal number of successful, average and unsuccessful students. Secondly, the most important factors of oral English learning attributed by non-English major graduates are personal effort, learning motivation and English classroom environment. Thirdly, successful and unsuccessful students display a very similar attribution orientation towards their oral English learning and the only significant difference is the factor of classroom environment.Based on the findings of the research, some pedagogical suggestions are made in order to facilitate oral English teaching.