A Study Of College Non-english Majors' Achievement Motivation And Their Attributions Of Success And Failure In English Learning

Factors influencing college students' English learning are mainly divided into two categories: intellectual factors and non-intellectual factors.Psychological researches show that non-intellectual factors play an important role in the process of guiding,controlling and regulating English learning for non-English majors.Among all non-intellectual factors,individual achievement motivation and self-attribution for success and failure are particularly important.Previous researches about English learning rarely involve the relationship between achievement motivation and the four factors of attribution(effort,ability,context and luck).This paper will summarize the situation of achievement motivation and self-attribution of college non-English majors through analyzing the students' achievement motivation and their attribution style in English learning.This study also attempts to find out the relationship between the students' achievement motivation and their attribution of success or failure.This study consists of two main parts: literature review and empirical study.The literature review focuses on concepts,classifications,measurement methods and related researches on achievement motivation and attribution at home and abroad.In the empirical study,two questionnaires were used to investigate the students' achievement motivation and their attribution of success or failure in English learning.The author tries to answer the following three questions:(1)what is the present situation of college non-English majors' achievement motivation in English learning?(2)How do college non-English majors attribute their success and failure in English learning?(3)what is the relationship between college non-English majors' achievement motivation and their attribution?In this study,242 non-English majors from three different colleges of Chengdu University of Technology were investigated.Based on the analyses of data results,the author gets the following conclusions:(1)College non-English majors' achievement motivation level is high in general.Their motivation to pursue success is much higher than their motivation to avoid failure.Different genders,majors,and learning-time result in differences in students' achievement motivation,but the differences are not significant.(2)College non-English majors' attribution style is positive in general.Students of different genders,disciplines and learning times seem to have a similar attribution style.(3)General regression analysis of the relationship between the four factors of attribution(“ability”,“effort”,“context” and “luck”)and achievement motivation show: “effort” is positively correlated to achievement motivation;“ability”,“context”,and “luck” are negatively correlated to achievement motivation in general.However,both positive and negative correlations are not significant.Specific regression analysis of the relationship finds that there are correlation between students' attribution and their achievement motivation.However,there are differences in correlation in terms of different genders,disciplines and learning times.Based on the research analyses and conclusions,the author gives some suggestions to both college students and teachers.Suggestions are made on how to improve the achievement motivation and how to guide students in making positive attribution in English learning.