A Study Of Attributions In English Language Learning At Secondary Vocational School

As an important psychology theory, the theory of attribution aims to explain and indicate thesocial behaviors of people. In the1990s, it was widely applied in the field of education. And itsgreat influences on education have been proved sufficiently. The students’ attributions to theirprior learning outcomes greatly affect their prediction of future success. Thus it determines howhard they will work in the future study. So the teachers can give direct intervention to student’learning process and outcomes just through acknowledging their attributions. This can beregarded as one of teacher’s most important tasks.At present, there have been a large number of researches on attributions in second languageacquisition. And the emphasis is mainly put on the junior middle school students, senior middleschool students and college students. However, the secondary vocational school students, whoare a special constitution of middle school students, are nearly ignored. Besides, among thepresent researches, most of them are based on quantitative study. The researches which arebased on qualitative study or the combination of quantitative and qualitative study are relativelyrare. Therefore it is of great significance to study into the secondary vocational school students’attributions in English learning with a method of combining quantitative study and qualitativestudy.Based on the attribution theory, the paper aims to probe into the secondary vocational schoolstudents’ attributions in English learning. With the use of investigation questionnaire andinterview, the paper attempts the answer the following questions:(1)What is the characteristic of secondary vocational school students’ attributions in Englishlearning;(2)What are the differences in secondary vocational school students’ attributions betweendifferent genders?(3)What are the differences in the attributions in English learning between differentproficiency levels, i.e., between successful and unsuccessful learners?(4)What are the factors that have great effects on the vocational school students’ attributions?The major findings of the research can be concluded as follows:(1)The secondary vocational school students mainly attribute their present English level to internal and stable factors, such as learning ability, learning foundation, etc.(2)There are obvious differences between male and female’s attributions, the male tend toattribute to learning confidence, while the female tend to attribute to learning ability, efforts andlearning atmosphere.(3)The obvious difference that appears in self-estimated successful learners’ and unsuccessfullearners’ attributions can be concluded as: successful learners tend to attribute their successes toexternal factors, while the unsuccessful ones tend to attribute their failures to internal factors.(4)There are mainly four factors that play important roles in secondary vocational schoolstudents’ attributions. They are confidence, interest, teacher’s concern and instruction, thesurrounding atmosphere.