A Study On Learning Motivational Factors Of English Low Achievers In Senior High Schools And The Countermeasures

In recent years, there has been a shift of direction and emphasis in education in China. The shift is from the test-oriented education to quality-oriented education. It emphasizes that education should face the world and the future, that is to say, education should develop from the development of humans and society. But there are lots of students who fail in study in our country. They are often called poor students or low achievers. The problem with the low achievers is closely related to whether education of our country is successful or not, so solving the problem with the low achievers is of great urgency for teachers in China. Of all the subjects, learning of language subjects is bound up with affective factors and therefore we can say foreign language teaching is not only a cognitive process but also an affective process. Whether foreign language learning is successful or not is interrelated with the students'affective factors. While among all the affective factors, motivation is considered to be one of the main determining affective factors in success in developing a foreign language.The New English Curriculum Standards in Senior High School issued by the Ministry of Education in 2005 stresses as follows: Senior High School students should have definite learning motivation as well as the awareness of learner autonomy, and further strengthen and sustain their learning motivation. Low achievers' motivation to learn English is commonly quite poor, so the English language teachers should try their best to improve the quality of teaching and foster the students' learning motivation. Based on this consideration, an experiment was carried out to analyze the reasons for the occurrence of low achievers in English and look for the theoretical basis of the solution of this issue, and then to discuss how to transform the low achievers in English in the practice of teaching.The researchers put forward different theoretical frames so as to find which factors influence the students'motivation. Of the different motivational theories, students'goal orientation, self efficacy, attribution as well as teachers'mediation and so on are considered as the most important factors that influence students'learning motivation in cognitive psychology. Therefore, teachers should pay more attention to these motivational factors in order to improve the students'English learning motivation.In order to learn about learning motivational factors of senior high school students fully, the writer did a teaching experiment in Yucheng Comprehensive High School of Dezhou District following a questionnaire. This questionnaire was carried out in the writer's two classes, each of which has 60 students respectively, and one is served as experimental class, and the other control class. The data are analyzed by spss11.0 and the results of the questionnaire show the majority of the students realize the importance of English learning, have explicit learning aims and attribute their former academic failures and successes correctly but quite a few of them have low self efficacy , lack English learning interests and are dependent on teachers, so improving senior high school students'learning interests and awareness of English ,and at the same time, helping them feel confident and be independent in English study are all good countermeasures of transforming the low achievers in senior high schools. Based on the research results from the questionnaire, the writer has done a teaching experiment in the experimental class and the control class and then has analyzed the scores of 20 low achievers from the experimental class and the control class respectively before and after this teaching experiment. During the experiment the writer has taken some measures in the experimental class to cultivate the low achievers'interests in English study and at the same time help them find confidence. In the end, the writer makes some suggestions on transforming English low achievers in senior high schools from four perspectives which include learner level, teacher level, learning situation level and learning strategies to stimulate and sustain the low achievers'motivation to improve their English learning levels. After half a year's teaching experiment the countermeasures of transforming the English low achievers are proved practical and efficient and most of the low achievers feel more confident, develop an interest in English and try their best to learn English, so the author hopes that they can be useful in transforming low achievers in senior high schools.This thesis is only an initial attempt in transforming low achievers. To achieve the goal of making more low achievers'motivation be stimulated and sustained and even strengthened constantly, continuous efforts and research from all the teachers are needed so as to find better countermeasures of transforming English low achievers in senior high schools.