A Study On The Relationship Between English Learning Self - Efficacy And English Achievements Of Senior High School Students

Self-efficacy refers to the individual’s prediction and judgement about his ability to perform an expected action. This theory holds the view that people tend to be active in carrying out the action if they expect the desired outcomes of the acts. So students’positive self-efficacy benefits their learning behaviors and learning outcomes..The majority of senior high school students lay emphasis on learning English since it is the essential subject in the entrance examination. Teachers are always keen to improve students’ English through special approaches. However, lacking of English language environment and huge differences between Chinese and English stimulate hatred towards English learning, which result in the decline of self-efficacy. Students with low self-efficacy will fear of difficulty in English learning and lack of motivation to achieve good results. Thus, the vicious circle of "low self-efficacy in English learning---poor performance of English" will appear. Therefore, apart from providing appropriate knowledge and approaches, teachers should promote students’ self-efficacy in English learning as well. According to a great many of researches, there is a close relationship between self-efficacy in English learning and English scores. In other words, the former can positively predict the latter. Currently, the researches just focus on general self-efficacy instead of special field, such as, listening, speaking, reading and writing in English learning. In this research questionnaire survey has been applied to290senior high school students for investigation their self-efficacy in English learning. The English Self-Efficacy Questionnaire is composed of five aspects, which are general self-efficacy, self-efficacy in speaking, self-efficacy in listening, self-efficacy in reading and self-efficacy in writing. Listening, reading, writing and general competence of students has been summarized through the questionnaire.Data analysis yields the following results:1. Scores of five English self-efficacy of students are lower than intermediate level among which reading and speaking self-efficacy get the minimum scores.2. Self-efficacy of girl students are evidently better than boy students while there is no great discrepancy among different grades.3.. Self-efficacy of students has significant positive correlation with their English performance.4.. General self-efficacy of students can positively predict many but not all aspects of their English scores. Self-efficacy in writing can positively predict English writing levels of students while self-efficacy in speaking, listening and reading have nothing to do with predicting their English scores.According to the research results, the project of improving the self-efficacy of high school student is discussed. Some efficient key methods including,(1) learning strategy training;(2) Attribution ability training;(3) to guide the students to establish a reasonable goal;(4) creating active situation in teaching progress;(5)giving more care and encouragement to ones who has learning difficulties in English. On the basis of above strategies, we had conducted a small intervention case study and achieved some positive effect.