A Survey On English Learning Burnout Of Junior-middle-school Students In Rural Areas

Learning burnout is a phenomenon of emotional exhaustion, low self-efficacy and a tendency to depersonalize those who are being cared for, which derives from study stress, course load or other psychological factors when students are in the learning process. It is generated from the process of learning and not only have a certain impact on academic achievement but will have adverse effects on physical and mental health problems to students. The middle school stage is critical to construct correct outlook of the world, outlook on life and sense of values and important to transit to other stages. Due to stress and other reasons, some rural junior-middle-school students lose interest in English learning and produce burnout mood, so it is of great significance to study the present situation for English learning burnout in rural areas.The scholars both at home and abroad have paid more attention to current situation of students’ learning burnout. The study results show that it has close ties between the emergence of learning burnout and academic stress, social support and self-efficacy. In order to get deep understanding to the current situation of English learning burnout in rural areas, we choose a typical rural middle school--NO.3Middle School in Dongxiang County as sample and randomly select260students as subjects to conduct a survey, and then we try to find out the main factors influencing rural students’ English learning burnout through empirical research.This thesis applies Maslach’s research achievement of three-dimensional syndrome of emotional exhaustion, self-estrangement, and low self-efficacy, systematically analyzing the present situations of English learning burnout in rural middle school. The questionnaire of the thesis is based on Middle School Students Learning Burnout Questionnaire, which was made by Xue Shaocong, Southwest University. According to the particularity of rural students, we add some personal information, including gender, grade, academic ranking, parents’ educational degree and student cadre or not, and the scale of this thesis has some changes on the questions, thus make it suitable for rural students’ study background and the characteristics of English subjects. The survey questionnaire is renamed as Junior-middle-school Students English Learning Burnout Inventory. Through analysis of the questionnaire data we find that: (1) The rural junior-middle-school students in English learning does exist significant differences among three dimensions:emotional exhaustion, low self-efficacy and self-estrangement, of which are score of low self-efficacy dimension the highest.(2) Although English learning burnout is not serious enough happened to every rural junior-middle-school student, we never can feel too optimistic because of their lower self-efficacy in English study.(3) It has significant differences between gender and English learning burnout, grade and English learning burnout, academic ranking and English learning burnout, and student cadre or not and English learning burnout.In this paper, through data analysis we find that students’ low self-efficacy is the main factors influencing rural middle school students’English learning burnout. Based on the findings, we put forward some strategies to improve students’ English learning self-efficacy and eliminate learning burnout:(1) use the successful experience to train students’ self-efficacy;(2) change attribution way for low self-efficacy students;(3) change the methods of evaluation and rewarding;(4) carry out various kinds of activities and provide the opportunity for students to demonstrate their ability;(5) establish positive belief to students and (6) pay attention to the training of teachers’self-efficacy level.