Research On The Relationship Between English Learners’ Self-efficacy And English Performance In The Rural Secondary School

The new curriculum standard requires educators to pay attention to students’ emotion,and their psychological development. Teachers also realized the importance of affectivefactors in language learning. Self-efficacy theory has become a frontier problem in the studyof educational psychology. Learning self-efficacy has significant influence on learningbehavior and achievement. Students with high self-efficacy have strong self-control ability intheir learning, and also have a positive influence on their goal orientation and learningachievement. Therefore, the study of learning self-efficacy and teaching strategies hasimportant significance to improve the achievement of foreign language learning and teachingeffect. At present, research on College Students’ English learning self-efficacy in China aremore concentrated in the city high schools or universities. As to the students’ English learningself-efficacy in rural middle school students, it is relatively insufficient. In our country, therural population is about80%, for the rural middle school students, to change my hometownbackwardness, and to go out to the world, learning English well is more urgent and necessary.So, how is the present situation of students’ English learning self-efficacy in rural middleschools? What strategies can teachers adopt in their teaching? This research mainly focuseson these problems.The study tries to solve the following four problems: What’s the current situation ofstudents’ self-efficacy in rural middle school? Are there any significant gender differences instudents’ English learning self-efficacy? What’s the significant correlation between Englishlearners’ self-efficacy and their English proficiency? And what are the countermeasures toimprove students’ self-efficacy and their English proficiency?In order to solve the problems better above, the present thesis firstly makes a brief review on the situation of the research of students’ language learning self-efficacy as well asthe related theories both at home and abroad, and thus taking them as the theoretical supportof the research. Inspired by the previous researches, the present research adopted theSelf-Efficacy Scale (SES) developed by Bandura and the German clinical and healthpsychologist Professor Schwarzer Ralf et al. as the measurement to test students’ self-efficacy.And based on this, one open-ended questionnaire was also designed, aiming at finding out themain causes of students’ low learning self-efficacy. Subjects of the present research were167students of two classes in the No.2middle school of Biyang, Zhu Madian.After analyzing the research results, the present study discovered: in general, the ruralsecondary school students’ self-efficacy level is relatively low. Nearly90%of themexperience moderately low self-efficacy. On the contrary, there is only about10%of themwith high self-efficacy. In the rural secondary schools, male students’ self-efficacy is a littlelower than female ones. However, there is no big difference overall between male and femaleones. And there is a significant positive correlation between students’ self-efficacy level andtheir English performances. The reasons that lead to students’ low self-efficacy are mainlypoor living environment, and constrained condition; not enough attention paid by parents;over learning pressure; poor foundation and lacking of risk-taking.Finally, in order to cultivate and improve the rural middle school students’ self-efficacylevel, based on Chinese cultural background and the reality of rural second school’s Englishteaching, the author puts forward some effective strategies, namely, to help students setreasonable goals; to provide students with more opportunities to experience success and togive students positive expectations.