An Interface Study On Goal Orientation Theory,classroom Assessment Environmnet And High School Students’ English Achievement

This study mainly investigated the relationship between classroom assessment environment and goal orientation theory, on the basis of English course in high school. In the whole study, it further explored the major types of high school students’ perceptions of classroom assessment environment, their adoptions of goal orientations, and the relationships among these two aspects and students’ English achievement.The present study employed the survey method to investigate 180 second-year high school students and delivered the questionnaires to these students for collecting data. Then all collected data were entered into a series of data analysis, factor analysis, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analyses, to arrive at the rather reliable results.With the discussions of these results, it concluded with findings as follows: high school students’ perceptions of classroom assessment environment are mainly classified into three types: learning-oriented, harsh-oriented, and public-oriented environments. High school students’ adoptions of goal orientations verified the 2*2 construct framework of goal orientation theory: performance approach goals, performance avoidance goals, mastery approach goals and mastery avoidance goals.In terms of the results of Pearson correlation, students’ perceptions of classroom assessment environment and their adoptions of goal orientations would not greatly influence their English achievement. For perceived classroom assessment environment, only harsh-oriented environment was positively related to English achievement. For the adoptions of goal orientations, it was only found that, mastery approach goals positively correlated with students’ English achievement, whereas performance avoidance goals negatively correlated with students’ English achievement.With the multiple regression analyses, it was discovered that students’ perceptions of classroom assessment environment could predict their adoptions of goal orientations, to some degree. Learning-oriented classroom assessment environment positively predicted performance approach goal, mastery approach goal and mastery avoidance goal. Harsh-oriented classroom assessment environment positively predicted performance avoidance goal but negatively predicted mastery approach goal. Public-oriented classroom assessment environment slightly positively predicted performance avoidance goal and performance approach goal.The author hoped that this study could provide some theoretical foundations for how English teachers actively guided students’ motivation or goal orientations, and offered some directions for the improvement of foreign language teaching methods in school and the innovation of classroom assessment models.