A Study Of The Low Achievers' Motivational Factors In English Learning In Junior Middle Schools

Humanism thinks learning is a whole person process, and the learner isinvolved not just in the accomplishment of cognitive tasks but also in thesolution of affective conflicts and the respect for the enactment of values aswell. Concerning about students' affect is not only necessary to efficientEnglish learning, but to their whole quality development, which is the demandof English New Curriculum Standards, too.Motivation is considered to be one of the main determining affectivefactors in success in developing a L2 (Oxford & Shearin, 1994). Languagelearning motivation not only includes choosing language learning, but alsoinvolves sustaining efforts and persistence. Researchers have proposed variousmotivational constructs from different perspectives in order to establishmotivational components that influence the intensity of language learningmotivation. Among them, learners' task value, goal orientation, self-efficacy,attribution to previous performance and so on, have been empiricallyconfirmed to be important motivational components from the perspective ofcognitive psychology. For the purpose of improving students' motivationalstrength, teachers should attach emphasis to these established components.As Oxford and Shearin (1994) point out, without knowing where the rootsof motivation lie, how can teachers water those roots? In order to help teachershave a good understanding of the low achievers' beliefs regarding motivationalcomponents and the influence of their beliefs in their English learning in juniormiddle schools, the author has conducted a survey based on some relevantmotivational theories. 748 randomly selected students who were newlyregistered in a vocational school took part in the questionnaire survey, then 463students whose usual marks were below 60 were chosen as the subjects. All thedata were keyed into the Microsoft Excel worktable and calculated. At thesame time, the author also interviewed thirty students. The main findings of thesurvey are as following:Nearly 90% of low achievers understand the great value and importanceof English learning. In addition, they have explicit goals and most of them canattribute their former academic failure to some controllable factors. Amongthem, learning methods, less effort and interest are the top three factors.In spite of these, the low achievers have few interests in English learning;more than 80% of them think English is too hard to learn;most of them havelower self-efficacy, showing obvious learned helplessness;there are still 30%of the students attributing their failure to ability.Among the low achievers, boy students show fewer interests in Englishlearning than girl students, and they are more inclined to think English is hardto learn. The girl students are more likely to attribute their failure to effort,while the boy students are more likely to attribute to lack of interests.According to the survey results, how to improve the low achievers'positive attitude to English learning (such as how to understand the difficultyand the value of English learning), how to improve their interests and theirself-efficacy and learning strategies will be major concerns to prevent theappearance of more low achievers in English learning.Lastly, in the light of the survey results and some related literature, theauthor provides some implications and suggestions to English teaching injunior middle schools in order to generate and sustain the low achievers'motivation better in English learning. At the same time, the author also pointsout teachers need to conduct further study about middle school students'affective factors in English learning, based on the limitation of the study.