The Study Of Junior Middle School Students' Success And Failure Attribution And Self-efficacy In Grade Two In English Learning

This thesis mainly focuses on the study of junior middle school students'success and failure attribution and self-efficacy in grade two in English learning.Self-efficacy was proposed by American cognitive psychologist Albert Bandura first in 1977. It refers to people's judgments of their ability to execute the action required to achieve the performance people expect. Attribution theory was put forward by Fritz Heider first, and then it was improved and perfected by American psychologist Bernard Weiner. Weiner mainly focused on success and failure attribution and proposed an attribution model. These two theories are two significant theories to explain motivation which draw more attention in foreign languages teaching.The purpose of the thesis is to investigate whether there are differences in attribution and self-efficacy among groups based on different English proficiency and between self-reported successful and unsuccessful groups, and whether students'attribution and self-efficacy is correlated with their English proficiency. The hypotheses of the research are: There may be differences in attribution and self-efficacy among groups with different English proficiency. Students'attribution and self-efficacy is correlated with their English proficiency.The thesis investigated 107 junior middle school students in grade two by using of questionnaires, and had an interview with eight students. According to students'proficiency and results of attribution and self-efficacy questionnaire, SPSS 13.0 conducted the analysis of the statistical results, including Descriptive Statistics, Independent T-test, One-Way ANOVA, Multiple Comparisons and Pearson correlation. The following interview testifies the previous analysis results further,besides, the research results certified the author's hypotheses. The findings are as follows:(1) Junior middle school students in grade two have a positive attribution on a whole, but there are large inner differences among them. Students'self-efficacy is not low. They have stronger self-efficacy in the sense of confidence to achieve English learning goals.(2) There are differences in four attribution factors with different English proficiency. Students with relatively high proficiency tend to have sensible and reasonable attribution.(3) Self-reported successful students and unsuccessful students have different views to attribution. Successful students lay more stress on effort when they succeed.(4) Self-efficacy is a powerful predictor for students'English proficiency. Students with stronger self-efficacy have higher scores in English examinations.(5) There exits significant differences between self-reported successful and unsuccessful students. Successful students hold stronger self-efficacy than unsuccessful ones.(6) Attribution, self-efficacy and English proficiency correlate with each other. English scores and students'self-efficacy have significant positive correlation. When students make success attribution, effort has significant positive correlation with scores and self-efficacy. Luck and context correlate with sores and self-efficacy negatively, of which luck has significant correlation with English proficiency and self-efficacy. When students make failure attribution, ability, context and luck have significant negative correlation with students'scores and self-efficacy. Effort correlates with English scores and self-efficacy positively, but not significant.The findings testified to the importance of students'success and failure attribution and self-efficacy to English learning. In the thesis, the author provided some suggestions to guide students form a positive attribution tendency and to strengthen students'self-efficacy according to the analysis results. Besides, the study also provided some suggestions to the future researches.