A Study Of University Students' Attribution In English Learning

Attribution theory is recognized as the most systematic theory to explain learning motivation so far. This theory has attracted wide interest in the psychological and social psychological field since it was proposed by Heider for the first time in 1958. Many researchers, following Heider, have made great contributions to systemize the theory. Among them, Weiner is undoubtedly the most successful one. He made it possible to apply this theory in educational field. The three dimensions and the consequences of attribution he proposed shed light on how different attributional patterns influence learner behaviors.However, researches on attribution mainly focus in the fields of psychology and educational psychology; the importance of attribution in foreign language teaching has not been fully recognized yet. Therefore, this study sets out to investigate the attribution of Chinese university students in learning English, attempting to get a more comprehensive understanding of factors affecting university students'English learning.In this thesis, attributions of 213 university students from Central China Normal University were examined and the connections between attribution and gender, proficiency and academic discipline were investigated based on the data collected by questionnaires. Also,33 English teachers from the same university were asked to what they attributed student success and failure using similar questionnaires. Then, the teacher attributions and student attributions were compared to find out the differences between teacher opinion and student opinion. At last, follow-up student interviews were carried out to investigate the origins of student attribution.The results of the questionnaire showed that the attribution of university students was positive on the whole as they seemed to attribute success to internal controllable factors. However, their belief in internal controllable factors was rather weak and apt to change.Many statistically significant differences were found between attribution and gender, proficiency and academic discipline. It was found that girls tended to attribute both success and failure more to external factors than boys; while students of high proficiency maintained an internal attribution towards both success and failure, students of low proficiency were characterized by an external attribution towards success and an internal attribution toward failure; And arts students maintained an internal controllable attribution whereas science students showed an external uncontrollable attribution.The results also suggested that teacher attribution differed from student attribution. Teachers attributed students success to effort in class and teaching method, while students to luck and task difficulty. And at last, the useful information from interviews showed that personal experience, influence from others and observation were the three main origins of student attributions.Based on our findings, the author suggests that it is necessary to promote teachers' as well as students' awareness of the existence and influence of attribution; what's more, teacher should encourage internal controllable attributions among students and play down the influence of external uncontrollable attributions, so as to help students maintain a positive learning attitude and make further progress in English learning.