On The Implications Of Attribution Theory For Collgeg English Learner Autoomy

Promoting English learners'autonomous learning has always been a hot and important issue in education, and cultivating college students'autonomous ability has also been a long-term objective of language education. Especially the study of non-major students'English learning, it has gained common recognition in recent years. Though using the same textbook, instructed by the same teacher, students still turn to behave differently. During the process of autonomous learning, there are many factors which can affect learners'achievements,such as learning motivation and learning strategy, which has already been widely investigated. Among all the factors, attribution is an important factor that can not be neglected, because the way of attribution can greatly influence individual's motivation, emotion and so on. Therefore, it is quite important to make a research about it, which is an important part of enhancing learners'autonomous learning ability meanwhile.American psychologist F. Heider is the first one to put forward the basic principles and ideas of attribution theory. Attribution theory is a psychological theory about how people explain his or others'behavior and how these interpretations influence their motivations,expectations and following behavior. Among many attribution theories, it is Weiner's attribution theory that has been paid more attention and has been applied a great deal in many ways.Weiner, a psychologist, divides individual's attribution into four factors:competence,effort, task difficulty and luck; further, he analyzes these four factors from three dimensions:internal/external, stable/unstable, controllable/ uncontrollable. Research shows that individual's attribution has an important influence on his/her learner autonomy.With the guidance of Weiner's attribution theory, this paper aims to compare and analyze two different levels of students'current situation of learner autonomy and attributive tendencies during the course of autonomous learning, by adopting questionnaire survey and individual interview and applying quantitative and qualitative approaches to collect data. This thesis focuses on 109 freshmen and sophomores of Communication Engineering at Nanhu Campus in Jilin University as object of the research. This research aims to find out:1)What are the overall situations of English autonomous learning between freshmen and sophomores? 2) What are the differences of attribution tendencies on English achievements between the two groups? Therefore, this paper tries to explore some ways to cultivate and improve students'autonomous learning ability, and help freshmen adapt to college English teaching as soon as possible.In this thesis, all quantitative data are processed through SPSS v11.5.On the basis of the results and analysis of questionnaires and interviews, this research has found that:1)The current situation of college students'learner autonomy is less than satisfactory. But no matter for freshmen or sophomores, they are more inclined to learn by themselves;the majority of students express that they have not made enough efforts, or even do not spend on any effort; the application of learning strategies is at a low level, and some students do not yet realize what learning strategy is;the self-evaluation of learning outcomes is relatively poor. Comparing to freshmen, sophomores'English autonomous learning is much better.2) The way of their attribution tendencies is positive, for most of them attribute their achievements to effort and competence; certain problems still exist on some students, and more freshmen tend to attribute to task difficulty and luck.3) Both grades consider the environment and practical use as one of the most important cause affecting English outcomes, besides the four factors of Weiner's attribution theory; freshmen hold that teacher plays a vital role;sophomores think learning interest make a big difference.This paper takes two levels of subjects as a whole respectively, ignoring the difference in the same grade, which should be placed great emphasis in the practical teaching activity. Simultaneously, these subjects are all from top university and major in science, and the study sample is so small and so forth, which are all limitations of this study. There are many shortcomings still existing in this paper, further studies need exploring.With the more researching on learner autonomy, an increasing number of scholars began to pay more attention to this field and have got notable achievements.But there is few studies on exploring the influence upon learner autonomy from the perspective of attribution theory. The innovation in this paper lies in studying the difference of attribution tendencies between different levels during the course of autonomous learning from Weiner's attribution theory, and also to some extent tries to discuss how to cultivate and enhance college students' autonomous learning ability on helping shape the stable, internal and positive attribution tendency about the cause of success and failure in English language learning, raising awareness of self-control and autonomy through the use of English learning strategies and instructing students to set up learning goal reasonably and expand the practical room of learner autonomy. This paper to some extent provides an implication on college English teaching.