The Relationship Among Attribution, Self-Esteem And Academic Achievement In English Learning

According to Weiner’s attribution theory, the attributions that individual made for their previous performance have influence on the subsequent emotion, and then this emotion would affect their future achievement. With the increasing development and perfection of Weiner’s attribution theory, it has drawn a lot of attention in the education field, especially the linkage between attributional dimension—locus with affective self-esteem, many researches had found that attribution of achievement influenced self-esteem, self-esteem indeed influenced academic achievement and attribution of achievement also affected academic achievement. However, they are few published papers examined the relationship among attribution, self-esteem and academic achievement in English learning and teaching field, even less to explore whether self-esteem play a mediating role between attribution and academic achievement. Therefore, the present study is designed to explore the relationship among attribution, self-esteem and academic achievement in English learning.The present study mainly adapted quantitative method with the subjects of100freshmen of two classes major in accounting in second rank college in order to explore the relationship among English attribution, self-esteem and English proficiency, to examine whether self-esteem play a mediating role between attribution and English proficiency and make an attempt to study the effect of attribution intervention to attribution, self-esteem and English proficiency, the major findings are summarized as followed:Firstly, students in second rank-college demonstrated a negative attributional pattern, their success attributions were slightly external control tendency while their failure attributions were internal control tendency, their overall attribution were slightly internal control tendency. And among the twelve factors, learner rated learning strategy, teacher’s teaching, mood, interest, help from others and luck as the six most important factors for their success, while as for their failure, the six most important factors the students emphasized were learning strategy, learning foundation, effort, ability, teacher’s teaching and task difficulty, What’s more, learners’ self-esteem was not high and English proficiency was slightly low.Secondly, significant differences existed on overall tendency of attribution, external control tendency of success attribution between different English proficiency groups and between different English self-esteem groups. No significant differences were showed on external control tendency of failure attribution between different groups. The high English self-esteem group demonstrated the similar attributional tendency with the high English proficiency group; the low English self-esteem group demonstrated the similar attribution tendency with the low English proficiency group. Both the high English proficiency group and the high English self-esteem group had internal control tendency in overall attribution whereas both the low English proficiency group and the low English self-esteem group slightly tended to be external control tendency in overall attribution. At the same time both the high English proficiency group and the high English self-esteem group endorsed internal factors as determinate elements for their success while both the low English proficiency group and the low English self-esteem group stressed the contribution of external factors for their success. Furthermore, there had similarity in specific causal factors between different English proficiency groups and between different English self-esteem groups.Thirdly, overall tendency of attribution and external control tendency of success attribution had significant negative correlation with English proficiency. English self-esteem had significant positive correlation with English proficiency. English self-esteem was significant negative correlation with external control tendency of success attribution, overall tendency of attribution. It revealed that the more internal control of success attribution and overall attribution the students had, the higher proficiency they had, the higher English self-esteem they possessed. In addition, through multiple regression analysis, we found that English self-esteem had partly mediating role between attribution and English proficiency.Fourthly, Attribution intervention could shift negative attributional pattern. Attribution intervention enhanced internal control tendency of success attribution and overall tendency, at the same time attribution intervention slightly decreased external attribution for failure and external control tendency of failure attribution, on the other hand, attribution intervention also slightly increased the internal attribution for failure. It also benefited to enhance English self-esteem and English proficiency, although the effect of attribution intervention on English self-esteem was not significant.