Study On English Major Undergraduates’ Learmng Engagement

As one of the most important means to evaluate the quality of higher education, thestatus of students’ learning engagement has drawn more and more attention of domestic andforeign scholars. They have done plenty of researches on students’ learning engagement. Theresearches about learning engagement began in1980s and have been more and moredeveloped in recent years. Since2000, a lagre number of domestic scholars have begun to payattention to studies of this field. This study aimed to analyze the status of students’ learningengagement in Department of Foreign Languages of Northwest A&F University and find theirproblems existing in teaching as well as the according solutions on the basis of learningengagement theory with the help of former studies. In this research, the author used themethod of quantitative analysis and the revised Chinese version of international questionnairefor learning engagement:NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement).In this study,187freshmen, sophomores and junior students in English department ofNorthwest A&F University were surveyed on their performance on learning engagement bothin and after class. The questionnaire composed of questions concerning five aspects ofengagement: the degree of academic challenge, active collaborative learning, student-teacherinteraction levels, rich educational experience and supporting campus environment. The datawas analyzed through excel and such conclusions can be drawn:(1) Inadequacy of time forlearning. The results showed that some students spent little time on study.(2) students werenot cultivated fine sense of learning strategy and they read little literatures related to theirspecialty knowledge.(3) Students rarely cooperate with each other both in and after class.(4)Lack of cooperation between teachers and students are found in the survey. Teachers andstudents rarely communicate with each other after class and hence,when students came acrossdifficulties in their study or lives, they failed to get assistance and useful advice from others.According to the findings, such suggestions are given,(1) Strengthen processmanagement during the process of teaching to ensure the basic learning engagement in studytime.(2) Change the method of teaching and strenghen the interaction between students andteachers. In addition, to promote the cooperation of study through task-based teaching.(3) On one hand, Consummate curriculum system, on the other hand, to start literature-reading classand let students write book reports so that they can form the habit of reading literature inadvance to make preparation for the thesis.At last, the paper discussed the limitations of the research and recommendations forfurther study. The research sample was limited and not large enough which made the researchresult restricted. In the further study, the sample can be expanded to other universities in otherdistrict. In addition, owing to the author’s lack of teaching practice, the countermeasures putforward in the light of existing problems lacked the support of practice. Further study isexpected to combine theory with teaching practice through the methodology of diachronicstudy.