A Study On Motivation And Attitude Of Middle School Students In Learning English From The View Of Attribution Theory

A lot of studies have proved that the motivation and attitudes of foreign language learners play an important role in learning English. The high motivation and positive attitudes are helpful for learners in foreign language learning,otherwise they will hinder the learning. According to attribution theory, the correct attribution can stimulate motivation and has positive impact on the formation of positive attitude. The thesis is to study the motivation and attitudes of junior high school students from the view of attribution theory which first analyzes the attribution of students and the relationship between motivation and attitude, and then correlates the three factors to study the three invisible factors as a whole. The study has practical guidance on teaching which can help teachers to design proper teaching plan according to students'English level, so that the students'motivation can be stimulated, and positive attitudes can be developed. A questionnaire and interviews were used in this study to investigate the motivation and attitudes of junior high school students of grade two in a middle school in Suzhou.Three questions are addressed in this study:1. To what extent do the students'academic achievements correlate with their motivation and attitudes in English learning?2. What factors influence students'motivation and attitudes in English learning?3. What's a relation between students'attribution, motivation and attitudes?The major findings of the study are summarized as follows:Firstly, motivation and attitude have positive correlation with their academic achievements: the higher marks the students have the stronger motivation they have. And the good results further enhance their motivation and attitudes. The students who always get low marks don't have strong motivation.Secondly, among the four factors influencing students'motivation and attitudes, the teacher and the classroom settings more strongly influenced students'motivation and attitudes, and then the school atmosphere and their parents.Thirdly, when making attributions, students who get high marks used to attribute their success to their abilities, hard-working and positive attitudes, while students who did badly in English attribute their failure to the external factors, such as the exam paper.Based on the findings of the present study, these implications are drawn as follows:(1) Teachers should use effective measures to arouse students'motivation and to rectify attitudes in English learning.(2) We should pay attention to the influence of four main factors: school, parents, teachers and classroom atmosphere.(3) Teachers should know students'believes in attribution and do attribution training and lead them to make correct and positive attribution.