A Research On The Relationship Among High School Students’ Achievement Goal Orientation,Learner Autonomy And Self-efficacy

Achievement Goal Orientation is the reason behind individuals’ pursuit of a certain goal,and it is also a concept which has been widely adopted in the field of educational psychology.However,few studies have related Achievement Goal Orientation to applied linguistics and plenty of existing literature only focuses on college students.To make up for this gap,the present study attempts to figure out the current situation of high school students’ Achievement Goal Orientation(AGO),and furthers the research with exploration into Second Language Learner Autonomy(LA),Self-efficacy(SE),the correlation among AGO,LA and SE,and the mediating effect of SE.The present study intends to address three research questions: 1)What is the current situation of AGO,LA and SE among high school students in China? 2)What are the correlation among four factors of high school students’ AGO,LA and SE? 3)How does high school students’ SE mediate the influence of AGO on LA?The study adopts a mixed research method with both quantitative research and qualitative inquiry concerning data collection and data analysis.For quantitative research,200 questionnaires were collected,among which 191 were valid including80 from male students and 111 from female students.Findings of the data suggest that correlation between Mastery-approach Goal Orientation(MAP),Mastery-avoidance Goal Orientation(MAV),L2 Learner Autonomy(LA)and Self-efficacy(SE)is significant.Correlation between Performance-approach Goal Orientation(PAP),Performance-avoidance Goal Orientation(PAV)and L2 Learner Autonomy(LA)is moderately significant.The analyses also present a relatively significant positive correlation between PAP and SE,and an insignificant positive correlation between PAV and SE.In addition,Bootstrap analysis shows that SE plays significant mediating roles in the impact paths of four dimensions of AGO on LA.Proportions of mediating effect in four influencing processes are 62%,59%,74% and 65% respectively.Eight students and four teachers were chosen to take part in semi-structured interviews.Findings from the analyses of qualitative data demonstrate that high school students tend to pursue more mastery goals than performance goals in English learning.The present study endeavors to incorporate a four-dimensional AGO scale into high school English learning questionnaire,which might make some contribution to the theoretical advancement of goal theory and might be conducive to both teachers and students with regard to cultivating L2 Learner Autonomy,and making full use of SE’s mediating effect.