A Study On Attribution Of English-majors With Learning Difficulties

In recent years, exports and scholars have paid more and more attention to studies of the Attribution Theory and Second Language Acquisition. Since the1960s, the theory of attribution has been focused on Psychology field. However, in the field of second language acquisition, the study of attribution has aroused linguists'attention only for decades of years.This present research takes English-majors as its research subjects and intends to find out: 1. to what reasons do students with learning difficulties tend to attribute their academic achievements, and what are the characteristics of their attribution tendencies; 2. what are the differences between students with learning difficulties and the ones without learning difficulties in terms of attribution; and 3. what implications can the present research offer in guiding students with learning difficulties to better understand themselves and improve their learning?The main research instruments are a questionnaire and an interview. The questionnaire is based upon Weiner's Attribution Theory and the questionnaire model of attribution of Guo Hengjie. This questionnaire covers eight types of reasons, i.e. 1) stable, internal factors which can be controlled, such as interest in learning, self-confidence, etc.; 2) unstable, internal factors which can be controlled, such as efforts, attention, etc.; 3) stable, internal factors which cannot be controlled, such as ability, intelligence, etc.; 4) unstable, internal factors which cannot be controlled, such as fatigue, mood, etc.; 5) stable, external factors which can be controlled, such as the evaluation of teachers and the relationship between classmates, etc.; 6) unstable, external factors which can be controlled, such as the help of teachers and classmates, etc.; 7) stable, external factors which cannot be controlled, such as the degree of difficulty and learning conditions, etc.; 8) unstable, external factors which cannot be controlled, such as luck, etc.. It includes 20 testing items. There are in all 220 subjects in this research. They are English-major sophomores from College of Foreign Languages of Qufu Normal University (120) and Department of Xingtan College (100). Also, three interview questions are designed as the complement to the questionnaire, and 20 students are picked up among the above 220 students as the interviewees.This study indicates that:English-majors with learning difficulties tend to attribute their academic achievements to their ability, level of effort and the external factors. In other words, they attribute their academic failures to the stable and internal factors, such as lack of ability, efforts and interest and so on. For occasional success, they tend to attribute to the unstable and external factors, such as luck. Such kind of attribution tendency is obviously negative. This study also indicates that English-majors with learning difficulties are unwilling to attribute their academic failures to task difficulty. In contrast, English-majors without learning difficulties tend to attribute their academic successes to their high level of ability, interest and sufficient efforts. They attribute their failures to lack of effort or bad luck. So we can say that their way of attribution is positive, which will be good for their future learning. Some suggestions have been made in connection with the above findings, guiding students with learning difficulties to make proper attribution and promoting their learning effects.It should be noted that the study itself has some limitations. For instance, the scale of the questionnaire is rather limited. Also, the standards for the classification of the students with learning difficulties and the ones without learning difficulties should be detailed. Therefore, further studies should be done on attribution in the future.