A Study On Polarization In Junior High School Students' English Learning

In the 21 century, with the overwhelming globalization of economy and the tide of knowledge and information, China faces more and more internal and external opportunities and challenges. With the increasing international exchanges of politics, economy and culture etc, there are surely higher desires for all kinds of experts with foreign language skills in a large quantity and high quality. Hence, fluency skill of a foreign language (mainly English language) for talents becomes necessarily important in initiative international information exchanges for the moment and in the future.As we all know that the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Most Chinese students begin their English study at secondary school; therefore, the English groundwork at this stage may play a key role in further English study. Although the junior high school students' mind and body are growing rapidly, they are still in the period of juvenility and instability, and representing an impulsive, occasional, changeable behavior. Not only the polarization of English learning among the junior high school students prevails, but also polarization takes place earlier, at a higher percentage and to a more serious extent.This paper will discuss the attribution theory developed by F.Heider and B.Weiner, who provided the guide lines of basic fundamentals and methods in attribution, and then, attribute some causes to the English study with polarization of the junior high school students. Austrian social psychologist F.Heider, who is considered one of the representatives of the attribution theory, has figured out that it is the apperceive of an event rather than the event itself which can influence human' behavior. American psychologist B.Weiner, another attribution theory representative, has integrated and systematized the attribution theory, and developed a three-dimension attribution model, in which the attribution, sensibility and behavior are banded together . With this frame model, B.Weiner analyzed the attribution phenomena of education directly, and his arguments become the most important and systemic theory in explaining the incentives of learning. He has also examined the students' attribution of their failure or success under the circumstance of school education. Behavior attribution usually follows these basic fundamentals: considering behavior influence of internal and external causes dialectically, looking at the interaction of stabilization and non-stabilization in detail, and considering the impersonal reality as well as personal endeavor. There are some basic methods of attribution analysis: differentiating key clues and secondary clues, examining all kinds of causes factors, then figuring out the possible corresponding relationships, emphasizing the crucial effects (or conditions). Anyway, because attribution theory is one of the most useful study models of incentive, and surely can be used to examine and explain human' incentives of learning behavior.With attribution principles, this paper analyzes the answers based on questionnaires of English learning of the junior high school students, and finally, we attribute the polarized differences to several main causes as below: 1) the characteristics of English study and teaching materials factors; 2) inherent differences from the students themselves; 3) the quality and attainment of the English teachers in junior high schools; 4) family circumstance and condition of English learning. Correspondingly, some countermeasures are put forward: 1) inspire the motives of English learning; 2) pay more attention to strategic guidance of English learning; 3) try to improve the quality of English teachers in the junior high schools; 4) offer a better external circumstance of English learning.In general, the causes of polarized difference of English learning in the junior high schools could be attributed to many complicated factors, however, when all the society, schools and families care for the polarized difference phenomena of English learning together, take it seriously and cooperate with each other, we can expect that some active measures will be carried out to hold back the polarized difference of English learning efficiently. If so, we can surely promote the poorer performance of some junior high school students, and reduce the differences among them; after that, poorer students may have a better performance, and make students become more excellent. Therefore, the whole meaning of quality education could be embodied completely, and the quality of English teaching in the junior high schools could be enhanced widely.