A Study On Attributions For Academic Achievement: The Case Of Higher Vocational College Non-English Majors

“Attribution” is a term which has its origin in socio-psychology. However, this concept hasalso attracted many scholars’ attention in the field of education and Second LanguageAcquisition. Since the birth of American psychologist Bernard Weiner’s attribution theory,many researchers at home and abroad have investigated the students’ attribution for academicachievement. It is believed that the learners’ attribution for their academic achievement affectstheir affect response, expectancy for their future success and their subsequent learningbehaviors, and accordingly affects their academic achievement. A majority of empirical studiesconducted in China thus far have focused on the degree students’ attributional belief. However,the higher vocational college students as another major group of student body in highereducation should not be ignored and deserve research attention regarding their attribution foracademic achievement. Generally speaking, the English level of the higher vocational collegestudents is relatively low, which calls for an urgent need to help them improve their Englishacademic achievement. This study is intended to serve such purpose sampling the highervocational college non-English majors for studying attribution for their academic achievementin EFL learning and the relationship between their attributional beliefs and their Englishacademic achievement.This study employs both the quantitative research approach and the qualitative researchapproach. In the quantitative research, the questionnaire survey is used to study the macro trendof attribution for English academic achievement and the relationship between attributionalbeliefs and English academic achievement by using a sample of219non-English majors fromWuhan Technical College of Communications, Wuhan Bioengineering Institute and WuhanYangtze Business University. In the qualitative research, an interview is adopted to investigatethe specific attribution of individuals by using a sample of6students from Wuhan TechnicalCollege of Communications.Major findings of the present study can be summarized as follows: First, from thequantitative study, the higher vocational college non-English majors tend to attribute theirEnglish language achievement to four main factors, i.e. effort, ability, learning interest andteacher. What’s more, the effort factor and the learning interest factor affect students’ Englishlanguage achievement. Second, from the qualitative study, the higher vocational collegenon-English majors tend to attribute their ELL success to their efforts, their learning aptitude,their interest, and their teachers’ assistance. Correspondingly they attribute their ELL failure totheir failure in efforts, their lack of language aptitude, their lack of learning interest, and theirabsence of their teacher’s effective facilitation of studies. Third, the higher vocational collegenon-English majors also attribute their success to some other factors, such as their good English foundation, suitable learning methods, and good learning atmosphere, whereas attribute theirfailure to their poor English foundation, unsuitable learning methods and poor learningatmosphere. These findings have not been extracted in the quantitative study, but attained fromthe qualitative study.Hopefully this study can provide some recommendations to both students and Englishteachers as to how to enhance their learning and teaching efficacy. The students should cultivatetheir positive attribution style consciously, whilst the English teachers should guide the studentsto form such positive attribution style, and try their best to make their classroom teaching vividin order to excite the students’ interest in learning English.