A Study Of The Effect Of Attribution Tendencies Of High School Students With Low English Proficiency On Academic Achievement

Attribution theory has been proved to have great influence on English learning achievements and many interesting findings about this theory sprang up these years. Nowadays, the study on the attribution tendencies becomes hot in the field of education. However, at present, most of the researchers’studies about students’attribution tendencies mainly concentrate on college level English learning, while there are relatively rare studies aimed at senior high students. And most of the existed researches are based on successful learners, the researches about the unsuccessful students are relatively little. Therefore it is meaningful to pay attention to the low achievers and their attribution tendencies in senior high school English teaching and learning.The present investigation attempts to explore three questions from the following aspects:the general attribution tendencies of high school students with low English proficiency; the differences in attribution tendencies of these students between different genders; the factors affecting high school English low achievers’attributions.In order to settle down the questions above, this paper designed a questionnaire and an interview. This research selected totally203senior high school students including109male students and94female students from Tai’an high school, Anshan, Liaoning province as research subjects. And20of the subjects also accepted a face to face interview after finishing the questionnaires.Major findings of the present study are summarized as follows:Generally speaking, most of the students with low English proficiency on the academic achievement tend to attribute their success to external factors such as good luck, help from others while attribute their failure to internal factors such as lack of learning ability and lack of learning interest. This kind of negative attitude in attribution will lessen their interest and confidence in English learning. Besides, there exist certain gender differences between boy students and girl students’attribution tendencies. The paper drew a conclusion that when facing the success or failure in English learning, boy students tend to attribute to luck which is an external, unstable and uncontrollable factor while girl students tend to ascribe to learning ability which is an internal, stable factor. Finally, English low achievers’attribution can be affected by many factors such as interest, confidence, learning atmosphere in classroom, teacher’s concern and instruction, and help from other students. The findings of the present study have the following implications on English teaching:students’ characteristics are closely connected with their attribution tendencies, so high school English teachers should show more concern to unsuccessful learners. Helping these English low achievers know about the existing problems and difficulties in English learning is the ultimate cause to improve their academic performance. Attribution training is necessary to help unsuccessful learners form a correct, positive attribution attitude. At the same time, the gender difference should be taken into consideration. In teaching practice, teachers can reinforce students’ positive attribution trend by cultivating students’ interest. Besides, using hierarchical teaching can help unsuccessful students increase self-confidence. However, let the unsuccessful students get rid of their "trapped" situation is not an easy work which demands for English teachers to give long-term attention and learning guidance to consolidate their positive attribution mode.Through all this, this thesis, is aimed at finding a way to help students with low English proficiency on academic achievement so as to make second language teaching and learning more and more efficient.