A Comparative Study Of Chinese High School Students’ Conceptions Of And Approaches To Learning English In Urban And Rural Areas

The equity of urban and rural education has been a hot topic in the field of educational research.With the development of urbanization and informatization,students’ learning psychology,learning behavior and academic performance in urban and rural areas has attracted much attention.In the field of second language acquisition,language learners’conceptions of learning and approaches to learning are important factors affecting learning outcomes.Relevant research needs to be further enriched and expanded.English is a compulsory subject for senior high school students in China,and also a useful tool for them in the future.More empirical research needs to be carried out to improve our understanding of senior high school learners’ conceptions of and approaches to learning English in urban and rural areas.This research reports on a quantitative investigation on learners’conceptions of and approaches to learning English between high school students in urban and rural areas of China.The participants were 616 high school English language learners of two senior high schools in Qiannan District,Guizhou,China,and Beijing,China.The results showed that high school students’ conceptions of learning English were characterized by eight factors,namely "Meeting the Requirements","Memorizing","Testing","Drills and Practice","Increasing Knowledge","Applying","Understanding",and“Seeing in a New Way".And high school students’approaches to learning English included four dimensions,namely“Surface Motive","Deep Motive","Surface Strategy",and "Deep Strategy".Among which“Surface Motive" and“Surface Strategy" constituted surface approaches,and "Deep Motive" and "Deep Strategy" constituted deep approaches.The results of Pearson correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis indicated that there were intricate correlations and predictive associations between high school students’ conceptions of and approaches to learning English in urban and rural areas.The general finding was that conceptions of "applying","testing",and"drills and practice" played powerful roles in predicting learners’approaches to learning English of Beijing participants.While for Guizhou participants,the conceptions of "applying","testing",and "understanding"were the strongest factors to predict students’ approaches to learning English.It indicated that in the process of English language learning,applying English knowledge and coping with English exams are the common factors in predicting students’ approaches to learning English.In addition,urban students’ practicing English and rural students’understanding English are also the key factors affecting their learning approaches.Second,the factor "applying" makes significant predictions for all the dimensions of Beijing and Guizhou students’approaches to learning English,indicating that applying knowledge plays an overwhelming role in predicting approaches to learning English for urban and rural students.Third,higher-level conceptions of learning English significantly predicted students’surface and deep learning approaches.While lower-level conceptions of learning English only predicted the surface learning approaches.For example,"testing" only predicted the“surface motive" and "surface strategy" of senior high school English learners in Beijing and Guizhou.It shows that the higher-level conceptions of learning can more comprehensively affect learners’learning motivation and learning strategies in the process of learning English.This study also provided some pedagogical implications.First,senior high school English teachers in urban and rural areas can pay more attention to the cultivation of students’ higher-level conceptions of learning English,such as "drills and practice" for urban students and"understanding" for rural students.It will help to guide students’use of deep approaches,and consequently improve students’ English learning achievement and performance.Second,educators should focus on cultivating and improving urban students’ conception of practicing English and rural students’conception of understanding English.Third,English teachers should pay more attention to strengthen urban and rural students’conception of applying English in their English learning to comprehensively improve their performance.Fourth,policy makers should guide teachers to pay more attention to the evaluation of students’ English learning process and their personal development instead of test scores.Finally,this study also advocates a more rational allocation of urban and rural educational resources to provide rural students with more English learning resources and opportunities to practice English.In order to narrow the gap between urban and rural education and promote educational development equity,educators,researchers and policy makers need to make an effort together.