A Survey Of High School Students’ English Learning Motivation Based On Weiner’s Attribution Theory

Students’ English learning motivation is important to the whole process of English learning.Attribution is a perspective of studying motivation.Many scholars try to study motivation,but few scholars study motivation from the perspective of attribution.Even if some researchers apply attribution theory to motivation,they just list a wide range of attribution factors,and analyze the results with simple description.Among previous researches,more attention is paid to college students and vocational school students.Yet,the results of these studies may not be feasible at high school.Besides,compared with college and vocational school students,high school students’ motivation is worth more attention,because they are faced with various pressures in this period.It is urgent for them to realize the importance of motivation.Based on Weiner’s attribution theory,the author conducted the research,which lasted 4 weeks.275 high school students in grade 2 were chosen as the subjects.This research aims to investigate the current situation of high school students’ motivation,their English learning attribution tendency and the relationship between attribution and motivation.Two questionnaires were administrated to the subjects.Meanwhile,interviews of students as well as teachers were carried out by the author.Three research questions are as follows.1.What is the present situation of high school students’ motivation? 2.What is high school students’ English learning attribution tendency from three dimensions(locus,controllability and stability)and six factors(personal ability,personal effort,task difficulty,luck,physical and mental heathy and external environment)? 3.What is the relationship between high school students’ English learning attribution and motivation?Based on the results from the research,the author used EXCEL to analyze the percentage and chose two-tailed Pearson correlations as a main tool for data analysis with the help of SPSS 23.0.The results are demonstrated in the following.Firstly,the present situation of high school students’ motivation is at under-middle level.Most students’ English learning motivation is external.Their motivation is mainly from task and class,the influence of others and the pursuit of return.A small percentage of students’ motivation is internal.And among internal motivation,cognitive development accounts most.Secondly,from the attribution questionnaire,we can see that high school students tend to make different attributions on success and failure occasions.They tend to attribute their success to personal efforts,luck and task difficulty.In failure situations,they tend to attribute to personal efforts,personal ability,physical and mental health and external environment.Thirdly,by analyzing the data collected from the attribution and motivation questionnaires,the correlation between each attribution factor and six motivation factors are studied.The author finds that each attribution factor is related with motivation factors.The correlation between every attribution factor and total motivation score is significant.In conclusion,this research finds that students’ motivation is not very high.In addition,students’ attribution is not very scientific.English teachers should give students some instruction in the process of learning English.The importance of correlation between attribution and motivation should be given sufficient attention,and students must be aware that attribution plays an important role in their development of motivation.