Relationships Research About Achievement Goal Orientation, Autonomous Learning And English-study Grade Among Undergraduates

Achievement goal theory is a prominent social cognitive theory of motivation. Achievement goal orientation is an advanced problem of achievement goal study. Generally, researchers divide achievement goal into two types in the study field: learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation. The individual aiming in learning goal orientation regards study as a goal, paying attention to not only the development of self-ability but also the understanding and grasping of tasks. The individual aiming in performance goal orientation regards study as a method performing the ability by grade; however, they extremely slide over the situation that may cause failure and performance of low ability. Recently, researchers divide achievement goal orientation into three parts to build the new model of achievement goal orientation, namely divides performance goal orientation into performance-prove goal orientation and performance-avoid goal orientation. Both of the two orientations concern about the results of self-performance, but the former focuses on showing self-ability and obtaining the positive comments from others; the latter focuses on hiding shortage to avoid negative comments.Autonomous learning means that the learner is responsible of his own study, setting the goal of learning according to his features and needs, making study plan, selecting material, adopting fitful learning strategy, arranging and executing study behavior, supervising the process of learning and commenting the result of learning. The final purpose of all kinds of education is to cultivate individuals with the ability of relative self-help. From 1980's, autonomous learning is a hot issue of teaching research in and out of country. It is also a hot topic in research of learning language. In general, researches on individual's autonomous learning are not sufficient in the native part of English teaching study.In this research, there are several assumptions according to the previous results. First, the differences in major may cause apparent diversity in achievement goal orientation and autonomous learning; Second, the difference of gender may cause difference in achievement goal orientation and autonomous learning; Third, the three types of goal orientation have different performance in autonomous learning and English study grades; Last, different degrees of autonomous learning embody remarkably different English study grades.Based on group sampling, the research investigated 600 college undergraduate students of five specialties in two universities in Jinan, evaluating the difference of achievement goal orientation with the scales for achievement goal orientation, using the scales for autonomous learning to evaluate the students'difference in autonomous learning, with the grades of national college English Band-4 examination as the guideline of English study grades. Through filtration, the amount of effective questionnaires is 446. With statistical software SPSS11.0, analyze the data through ANOVA and Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis, etc. Main conclusions of the research are as follows.(1) The differences in the factor of gender have significant effect to English study grades.(2) The differences in the factor of subject have great effect to English study grades and achievement goal orientation.(3) Concerning the relationship between the three sorts of achievement goal orientation and autonomous learning: There is apparent positive correlation between learning goal orientation and autonomous learning. Between performances prove goal orientation and autonomous learning, there is apparent positive correlations while there is an apparent negative correlation between performances-avoid goal orientation and autonomous learning.(4) Concerning the relationship between the three sorts of achievement goal orientation and English study grades: There is apparent positive correlation between learning goal orientation and English study grades; There is apparent correlations between performance- prove goal orientation and English study grades while there is an apparent correlation between performances-avoid goal orientation and English study grades.(5) Individual's autonomous learning has a positive correlation to English study grades. Individual's degree of autonomous learning has a distinctive forecasting function to English study grades.