A Study Of The Correlation Between English Learning Attitude And Achievements Of Minority Nationality Preparatory Students In Undergraduate Institutions

From the reality of minority areas, minority nationality preparatory education is a special form of higher education that aims to cultivate qualified college students for minority regions. After many years’development, preparatory education has already prepared a large number of talents for the colleges or universities, and it has made an important contribution to regions’political, economic, cultural development and national unity, and it is also an important part of higher education in China.Most of the minority nationality preparatory students come from less developed areas in economy and culture, where education is relatively behind other areas. Those students have their own native language, and they need to learn Chinese in school, so English is the second even the third foreign language for them, the difficulty of English lessons seriously affects the students’ learning attitude, while attitude is the basic problem in English teaching, which not only affects the achievement, but also is a mirror of English and English teaching, it reflected the students’understanding of English teaching, emotional and behavioral tendency. As a result, it is important to investigate the correlation between students’ English learning attitude and English achievement to help these students to learn English well.According to krashen’s Monitor Theory, the research took47students of class63in Preparatory School for Minority Nationalities, a department in Nanchang Institute of Science and Technology, as the objects so as to know about their learning attitude and causes of their English learning attitude. The questionnaire was designed from the three aspects:cognition, emotion and behavior to reveal these students’English learning attitude and its influencing factors, and to investigate the correlation between a English learning attitude and their academic performance. In the end, all the data were analyzed by the use of SPSS.The thesis totally consists of five chapters. Chapter1is a brief introduction of the study, in which the research background, the significance of the present study and research structure are mentioned. Chapter2gives a review of recent studies on attitude both at home and abroad. It also provides some information, such as definition and classification of attitude. What’s more, theories concerning the correlation between English learners’attitudes toward English learning and their achievements are mentioned as well. Chapter3presents the research methodology. In addition, study questions, specific information about subjects, research instruments are also included in this part. The subjects are47preparatory students, and the paper mainly uses two kinds of instruments, that is questionnaire and interview to solve the three questions:Firstly, what are minority nationality preparatory students’ attitudes? Secondly, what is the correlation between students’learning attitude and achievements? Thirdly, what are the causes of students’learning attitude?Chapter4discusses the study results in detail. First of all, the study analyzes data from the questionnaire to understand the students’English learning attitude. Then the research analyzes the scores data of two final examinations between2012and2013(a pre-test and post-test), and makes comparative analysis on them. Finally, based on the examination paper analysis, the results of questionnaire and interview data, we can make comprehensive assessment on students’ attitude towards English.The author analyzes the students’ English attitude from cognition, emotion and behavior, and the results show that most preparatory students have a positive attitude towards English learning; students’ attitudes have a positive correlation with English achievements and there are some causes of students’learning attitude.For example, not enough attention to English, lack of interest in learning and lack of enough self-confidence and so on. Chapter5is the concluding part, in which the implications are first put forward and finally limitations are followed. From the analysis, we can see that their attitudes are mainly affected by both the external and internal factors. Internal factors refer to achievement motivation and self-need, that is learning motivation. Achievement motivation is an important factor in affecting students’learning initiative and is restricted by economy, culture and society, which contributes to changing students’ negative attitude and enhancing their learning initiative. While external factors include society, school and students.