An Investigation Of The Factors Leading To English Learning Difficulties In High School Students

It’s very common that students may meet with various difficulties in their studies, especially in English, which is a foreign language. It concerns many English teachers that what the students difficulties are, how to help and instruct them to overcome these difficulties. Therefore, lots of learners and teachers have researched on this topic. Researches started earlier abroad. After the proposition of the definition of learning disabilities by Kirk, researches were mainly about the cognitive process of learning disabilities or difficulties under the influence of cognitive psychology. Later, non-cognitive researches involved students’characteristics, behaviors, interpersonal relationship and so on. In the area of English learning difficulties, Eris owed all the leading factors to anxiety, lack of efforts and motivation, bad learning habits and so on, While Ganschow and Sparks proposed the Theory of Language Encoding Defect. Researches at home began decades later. Researchers tried to study more about learning difficulties in general and learning difficulties in English from different periods, areas and angels, and most of them divided the leading factors into external and internal factors.The author made this research based on a questionnaire survey conducted in Xiamen No.1 Middle School, aimed at knowing what difficulties the students have in their English learning, and what the leading factors are.In order to make this research more practical and pertinent, the author did a questionnaire survey among some of the students in Grade 2 by choosing 5 classes at each level randomly. By analyzing the results of the questionnaire, the author found out the difficulties students have in English learning, and summarized all the factors that concerned with these difficulties. Then the author tried to figure out the causes of these difficulties according to the situation in Xiamen No.1 Middle School, and proposed some possible suggestions for how the difficulties could be overcome.The results show that,23 percent of the students think it very difficult to learn English,64 percent think it difficult to learn English. Besides, among listening, oral English, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary,79 percent of the students think grammar is the most difficult, reading and writing come the second with 70 percent supporters, and 60 percent choose oral English.Through the analysis of the results, the author found out that the factors that concerned with students’English learning difficulties are mainly as follows:the gender of the students, students’ learning motivation, interest, opinions of English, previous English learning, learning strategies and habits, level of intelligence, teachers’teaching methodology and style, teaching materials, time available for learning, English learning atmosphere in a class and so on.Taking the practical situation in Xiamen No.1 Middle School into consideration, the author found four main causes that led to students’ English learning difficulties. At last, the author proposed some suggestions to help solve this problem.