A Study On English Learning Self-efficacy Of Rural Junior High School Students

Self-efficacy is one’s belief, self-judgement or self-mastery of the subject in one’s ability and strength to complete tasks and reach goals in specific situations. As for English learning self-efficacy, it is the belief and support for student’s English learning achievement and learning self-confidence. China’s two thirds of population are in rural areas. And, today’s rural junior high school students are the main driving force of new construction in the future development of the vast rural areas. Besides, it is stated in English Curriculum Standard(2011) that the emotional attitude is the critical factors that affect students’ learning and development. There are so many studies on students’ self-efficacy, but the study on rural students’ English learning self-efficacy is almost a blank, especially about rural students in junior Grade Two. So, based on the above background, this paper carries out a survey on the current situation of rural junior high school students’ English learning self-efficacy, and proposes some corresponding strategies according to the present situations and the existing problems.This study is based on the theory of self-efficacy, and questionnaire method,interview method and literature analysis method are jointly used to investigate the current situation of rural junior high school students’ English learning self-efficacy. Two hundreds of rural junior high school students in Grade Two and six English teachers from six rural junior high schools in Linyi City are chosen as the survey subjects.This study aims to answer the following three questions:(1) What’s the current situation of rural junior high school students’ self-efficacy?(2) What are the factors influencing the rural junior high school students’ self-efficacy?(3) What’s the relationship between English learning self-efficacy and the academic achievement of rural junior high school students?Through the analysis of the results, some major findings are concluded.(1) The overall rural students’ English learning self-efficacy is at a relative low level.(2) Ingeneral, there are three types of the factors influencing the rural junior high school students’ self-efficacy. First, it is students’ own factors, such as personal effort, learning anxieties, learning methods, learning attitude and attributions; second, it is family factors, for example, parents’ education backgrounds, education styles; third, it is from school, teachers’ teaching methods and teaching self-efficacy.(3) The study shows that English learning self-efficacy and English academic achievement are interdependent and mutually influenced.Consequently, this study proposes some suggestions to improve rural students’ English learning self-efficacy. It is suggested that the teachers should make efforts to cultivate rural student’s English learning self-efficacy awareness, guide students to set appropriate learning objectives, improve teachers own teaching self-efficacy and to innovate teaching and evaluation methods. Besides, appreciation education should be implemented with appropriate parenting styles from the parent’s point of view.