The Effects Of Teachers' Expectations On Students' Attributions For English Achievement

Everyone will experience success or failure during English learning. However, how they attribute is different from one to another. Effort, ability and task difficulty are the most common reasons to which students attribute. These different attributions have different influences on further study. According to the functions, attributions are divided into adaptive and maladptive attributions. The former kind will push learning and the later hinder. Therefore, how to help students form adaptive attributions becomes a focus. Currently, attribution training is the one that are used mostly. It is limited by its high requirement of professions, though.Based on Weiner's Achievement Attribution Theory and Teacher's Expectation Effect, the current study aims to provide a new way to improve students' attributions by revealing the relationship between teachers'expectations and students'attributions, that is teachers could influence students'attributions by adjusting their expectations for them. Meanwhile, since they are sensitive to teachers'behaviors and expectations, students have the ability to perceive teachers' expectations. Therefore, from the view of students'perception, the present study focuses on the following four specific questions by measuring students'perceived English teachers' expectations and students'attributions for English achievement.1) What's the current situations of the perceived English teachers' expectations of junior middle school students?2) How do the junior middle school students attribute the success and failure during the English learning?3) What's the relationship between teachers' expectations and students' attributions? 4) Is the relationship different between male and female students and among students in three gradesof junior middle school?Based on the self-designed questionnaire and the use of SPSS.17.0, the main findings are:1) Perceived English teachers' expectations of junior middle school students are high and the order of the three expectations are:study support, emotional support and ability support. Female students perceive higher expectations than male students. Students of Grade Two perceive higher expectations than the other two grades.2) Junior middle school students are more likely to make attributions of effort and learning method and less to teaching quality and task difficulty. There is no significant gender and grade differences on this issue.3) Perceived English teachers'expectations are positively related with achievement attributions and particularly with attributions of effort and learning method. Perceived teachers'expectations play more active roles in male's attributions than female's and in Grade Three students'attributions than the students of the other two grades. Therefore, teachers'high and proper expectations are useful in helping students form adaptive attributions.