A Survey Into Burnout Of Senior Middle School EFL Teachers In Lanzhou

Burnout occurs in groups of people in"helping profession"and negatively influences people both in body and mind. It causes tense relationship with people around and negative attitude at work. Research on this phenomenon began since 1970s in western academic field. Although there are many researches on burnout already, it is still a new field which needs further exploration in China. The present study investigates 85 EFL teachers from six senior middle schools in Lanzhou area.This study attempts to explore the actual situation of job burnout among senior middle school EFL teachers in Lanzhou area. It centers around three dimensions concerning a general study on the current burnout situation, the personal factors and pressure sources. The findings of the research are:1. The most of senior middle school EFL teachers in Lanzhou suffer from different degrees of burnout. According to it, among three dimensions of burnout, the senior middle school EFL teachers'EE of burnout is on the highest level, the dimension of DP goes second and the dimension of RPA is at last.2. (Relationship between) teachers'personal background factors and job burnout: Lanzhou senior middle school EFL female teachers experience significantly higher level of burnout than male teachers; teachers who age from 31 to 40 years old and who have 11 to 15 years of teaching experiences score higher in all three dimensions of burnout than any other groups but not significantly; teachers who have got master degree tend to suffer more from burnout; EFL teachers who render service in key schools have higher and Depersonalization than those in ordinary schools; outstanding EFL teachers suffer more emotional exhaustion while non-honored EFL teaches score higher in all three dimensions than other groups; for academic achievement, the EFL teachers who have their thesis published and have taken part in the various forms of seminars are prone to score higher in all three dimensions than those who have not.3. The main pressure sources are summarized as: heavy workload, long-time working; low salary and welfare; the assessment system is unfair; administrators'status is higher than teachers'status; insufficient understanding from leaders and colleagues.In the light of the study, the thesis provides some suggestions for preventing senior middle school EFL teachers'burnout, such as improving teacher status, job enrichment and redesigning, modifying evaluation system, teacher conditioning and participatory team leadership, etc. It is hoped that this study can contribute a lot to enhancing the senior middle school EFL teaching efficiency in Lanzhou area.