Linking Student Culture To Academic Performance In EFL Courses

As China expands its colleges and universities, higher education tends to become popularized. After carrying out the policy of reform and opening up to the outside, Chinese people are thirstier for receiving higher education than ever. Since government funds alone cannot meet the pressing need of expanding higher education, private colleges develop out of necessity and supply a gap. In this context, more and more students who were previously excluded now have access to higher education. Many of the new university students do not perform as well in the college entrance examination as the more traditional students. Private colleges meet the demands of these students who are eager to receive higher education but get low marks in the national entrance exam. Private colleges are in the stage of revitalization and are faced with their particular problems in management and English teaching.In Chinese academic circle, the research on private colleges is increasing recently. But the study of EFL teaching and learning in private colleges is in its infancy. Compared to the rapid growth of private colleges, there are few papers concerning teaching English to non-English majors in private colleges in main foreign language journals in China. In such a background it is of crucially theoretical and practical importance to study the current status of English learning and to improve English teaching in private colleges.This paper studies 31 non-English majors in a private college—Z College. They are freshmen, including 20 boys and 11 girls. The relationship between their subculture and English performance is studied qualitatively. The 31 e-commerce majors come from three different classes. The college faculty divides all the non-English majors into three groups, with A representing the high track, B the general track, and C the low track. The participants of this research are Group C members. This paper aims to answer the following three questions:1. What is the subculture of the low-achieving students placed in the low track in the private college?2. What causes the poor performance of the students in EFL courses?...