A Study Of Attribution Of Middle School Students With English Learning Difficulties

Since the 1960s, the theory of attribution has been focused on in psychology field. The attribution theory originates from the American psychologist Weiner's theory of attribution, which was put forward in the 1970s and was modified in the 1980s. However, in the field of foreign language teaching, the study of attribution has only a very short history. Only in recent ten years does it arouse the attention of linguists when they study the theory of language acquisition (Crookes, 1991;Dornyei, 1994;Oxford, 1994;Schmidt, 1996;Wen, 1997). In our country, the study mainly focuses on children and university students. There are few researches into the study of attribution of English learning difficulties for middle school students.In order to find out how students with English learning difficulties make attribution about the result of their foreign language study in middle schools, I design a questionnaire with 16 testing items according to Weiner's attribution theory. Through the study, I intend to learn the trend of these students' attribution to English learning and to probe methods to guide or train students to attribute in a proper way, which helps to arouse student's interest and confidence in their foreign language learning.First, I focus on the definition of learning difficulties both at home and abroad, and I state the behavior of students with learning difficulties.Then, I present attribution theories in psychology field and the development of the theory, mainly touching the attribution theory of Heider and Weiner, especially Weiner's.I designed a research. There were 106 students from two different schools taking part in the research, and at last I got 100 pieces of effective questionnaire papers.I analyze the characteristics of attribution of middle school students with English learning difficulties, with a comparision between the students with English learning difficulties with the ones without difficulties.At last I put forward some tactics of developing student' s good learning motivation in studying, stimulating their confidence, arousing their learning interest and directing them to make proper attribution.In a word, this investigation helps teachers to learn how middle school students with English learning difficulties attribute about their English learning and learn to instruct and train students to attribute in a correct way. All this will help us to improve our teaching efficiency.