A Study On The Influence Of Cognitive And Non-cognitive Factors In English Learning For Secondary Vocational School Students

The majority of secondary vocational school students are supposed to be able to meet or basically meet the requirement of the junior high school curriculum standard after their three years academic learning in the junior high school. However, the reality of the vocational school teaching shows that a lot of students fail to reach the basic levels or standards prescribed by the junior high curricula, of which English learning is more serious and prominent. The unpleasant situation does not only set obstacles in the course of secondary vocational school students'progress in terms of motivation, unclear learning objectives, lack of interests in learning, inefficiency and poor language learning results, but also interferes seriously with the smooth completion of English language teaching tasks and the improvement of teaching and learning quality.Such elements as influencing English language acquisition are often defined in terms of cognitive elements and non-cognitive elements. Cognitive elements refer to the intelligence factors or levels attached to the language learners themselves, while non-cognitive factors are what we generally know as psychological characters like attention, motivation, interest, emotion, will, as well as the peculiar personal psychological characteristics of ability, temperament and disposition etc.In order to better understand the respective influences upon their English learning results by cognitive factors and non-cognitive factors in the process of language learning, we made a related research upon 67 secondary vocational school students with the help of four sets of questionnaires. We mainly hoped to explore the inter-related cause-result effect among learning style, learning strategy, achievement motivation and learning willingness, so as to analyze the findings in the methods of mmultiples regression analysis and path analysis.Our research results indicate that both cognitive factors and non-cognitive factors can affect the acquisition of English. There is a significant correlation between willingness to learn, achievement motivation, learning style and English proficiency, but learning strategies and English proficiency are not significantly related. The students'Learning styles as an intermediary variable have a significant impact on their English learning. Willingness to learn and achievement motivation function indirectly through their influence on English learning performance.