A Study On Senior High School Students’English Learning Burnout-from The Perspective Of Attribution Theory

Learning burnout refers to students’ state of emotional exhaustion, indifferenceand low self-efficacy due to long-term academic pressure, which in turn will do harmto their physical and mental health and academic achievement. It is believed thatEnglish learning burnout directly reduces students’ enthusiasm of learning Englishand affects students’ English learning efficiency and effectiveness. Thus, in today’sera of advocating quality education, it’s particularly important to study students’English learning burnout and discuss how to effectively reduce it. However, althoughdomestic and foreign scholars’ researches on learning burnout have been relativelymature in its definition, structure and measurement and influencing factors, the relatedresearchers from the angle of attribution are still less. What’s more, most of thestudies focus on college students, the studies on middle school and high schoolstudents are even less. Therefore, focusing on high school students, based on theinvestigation into their English learning burnout and English learning attributiontendencies, this research intends to analyze the correlation between them so as toexplore the influence of high school students’ English learning attribution tendencieson their English learning burnout. Besides, the present research aims to put forwardsome corresponding strategies from the perspective of attribution.Maslach’s three-dimensional burnout theory and Weiner’s attribution theory arethe main theoretical foundation for the present study. Maslach states that burnout ismade up of emotional exhaustion, cynicism or depersonalization and reduced personalaccomplishment, on which scholars usually base to conduct the study of learningburnout. And Weiner points out students mainly attribute their academic success orfailure to ability, hard work, luck and task difficulty and puts forward the famousthree dimension model of attribution including internal and external sources, stabilityand controllability. Students’ attribution not only explains the reasons of the previousstudy results, but also impacts their future learning behavior.The research puts forward three research questions about high school students’English learning burnout, attribution tendencies and the correlation between them. On the basis of the questions, an investigation is carried out with360students in SeniorHigh School Attached to Shandong Normal University and Shandong Jigang SeniorHigh School as the research subjects. Two questionnaires are designed, one is on highschool students’ English learning burnout and the other is on high school students’attribution tendencies. SPSS20.0software is employed for data processing andanalysis.Through analysis and discussion, the research has found that firstly, high schoolstudents have English learning burnout problems to some degree, which is not veryserious. And their English learning burnout mainly manifests in low-efficacy andemotional exhaustion. In terms of differences, gender difference is not obvious, butdifferences in grade and English academic achievement are significant. Secondly,high school students are more likely to attribute English academic success to effortand ability, and English academic failure to ability and luck. There are obviousdifferences in gender, grade and English academic achievement. Thirdly, high schoolstudents’ English success attribution tendencies have significant negative correlationwith their English learning burnout, while English failure attribution tendencies havesignificant positive attribution with their English learning burnout. Internal factorshave bigger influence on students’ English learning burnout than external factors bothin success attribution and failure attribution. Attributing English academic success tointernal factors helps to reduce English learning burnout, whereas attributing Englishacademic failure to internal factors may lead to a higher level of English learningburnout. It is sincerely hoped that this research results and findings can make certaincontribution to the promotion of English teaching in high schools.