A Study On Relationships Among English Learning Self-efficacy, Attribution And Academic Achievement Of Non-english Majors In Higher Vocational Colleges

Self-efficacy and attributional beliefs are two main factors in affecting learners'academic achievement. Many empirical studies on self-efficacy and attributional beliefs have been made at home and abroad. However, these studies have been respectively conducted on self-efficacy and attributional beliefs in domain of English teaching and learning in the Chinese context. Little research has been done to investigate the relationship among self-efficacy, attributional beliefs and academic achievement, especially from the perspective of higher vocational college non-English majors. Generally speaking, their English level is much lower. How to improve their English academic achievement is an urgent question. Therefore, the present study is designed to investigate the relationship among self-efficacy, attributional beliefs and their academic achievement.Based on the theoretical foundations of Bandura's self-efficacy theory and Weiner's attribution theory, the present study adopts a quantitative approach to investigate the English self-efficacy and attributional beliefs by using a sample of 213 non-English majors from higher vocational colleges. The findings indicate that: (1) The general self-efficacy of higher vocational college non-English majors is above middle level. There are significant differences among students with different achievement level in confidence in achieving the goal in English study, sense of competence in finishing tasks in English study and evaluation of ability to cope with difficulties in English study. The higher achievers have fairly good self-efficacy while the moderate achievers have moderate self-efficacy and the low achievers have the lowest self-efficacy. The correlation analysis showed that self-efficacy is positively related with PRETCO-A. (2) As for attributional beliefs, students tend to attribute their English learning to effort. It is found that successful learners and unsuccessful learners are significantly different in ability, luck and context attributions. The successful learners are likely to attribute their success to ability and their failure to luck and context, while the unsuccessful learners tend to attribute their success to luck, context and their failure to ability. Of the success attributional beliefs, ability is positively related with academic achievement, while luck is negatively related with academic achievement. Of the failure attributional beliefs, ability, luck and context are negatively correlated with academic achievement. (3) Correlation analysis between self-efficacy and attributional beliefs indicates ability-success and effort-success are positively correlated with self-efficacy, while luck-success, luck-failure, and ability-failure are negatively correlated with self-efficacy. (4) The regression analyses revealed that self-efficacy,ability attribution and luck-success may predict academic achievement. External attributions indirectly affect academic achievement via self-efficacy. A causal model is established based on the regression results. The study lends support to the view that self-efficacy and attributional beliefs play important roles in English learning. The study provides some recommendations to both teachers and students. In teaching, teachers should lay emphasis on raising students'English self-efficacy, train students to make positive attribution, make students to have a right attitude towards English learning, so that their English level could be improved.