A Study Of How To Raise Primary School Students’ Level Of Self-efficacy In English Learning

Self-efficacy which was proposed by cognitive psychologist Albert Bandura in1977is just one concept influencing students’ psychological development. It has beenpaid more and more attention in recent years. Self-efficacy beliefs affect people’smode of thinking and behavioral performance, and the perseverance and resiliencepeople show in the face of adversity.The purpose of this study is to find out how to raise primary school students’level of self-efficacy in English learning. This study focuses on the feasibility ofcooperative learning in promoting self-efficacy in EFL Learning. The aim of theresearch is to find out: whether the integration of cooperative learning into teaching ishelpful to promote primary students’ sense of English learning self-efficacy or not.Cooperative learning experiment of this study was conducted for sixteenweeks．The subjects were Grade Six students in a primary school in Kunming. Thestudents who were divided into experimental group and the control group wereinvolved in this study. The data were collected by means of pre-test，post-test,questionnaires，interviews，and the researcher’s observation．The results of the studywhich were analyzed by SPSS indicate that：(1) Cooperative learning method provided a better learning environment forEnglish learning. Students in groups had more chance to learn interdependently in amore relaxed atmosphere. Cooperative learning enhanced students’ learningenthusiasm and creativity, increased their motivation by providing peer support．Moststudents’ sense of English self-efficacy had been promoted as the result of theapplication of cooperative learning.(2) Cooperative learning could arouse students’ interest and raise their level ofself-efficacy．However, the integration of cooperative learning was not the only factorthat contributed to the up-grading of the students’ sense of self-efficacy．(3) Different students benefited differently from cooperative learning. Studentswith high English learning self-efficacy gained more progress in English learning self-efficacy than students with low English learning self-efficacy．And from theclassroom observation, it was easy to find the boys did better than girls in cooperativelearning.At the end of the thesis, the limitation and suggestions for further research areproposed. Based on the result of study, some implications for English teachers inothers primary schools to explore more effective approaches to promote students’sense of self-efficacy in the future.