The Influence Of Student Engagement On University English Majors' Learning Achievement

To improve students' learning achievement,scholars in China contribute a lot in studying how to construct more advanced and scientific English teaching models from instructor's angle while more and more research abroad indicates significance in exploration from student's perspective.Available research demonstrates that student engagement is possibly correlated with learning achievement,which indicates that student disengagement is the direct problem in English learning.This study aims at figuring out how each aspect of student engagement influences English learning achievement,enriching Self-System theory and providing implications for better English teaching.The survey is conducted among English-major undergraduate students(N=89)in a university in Shenzhen.Through a multi-method approach(questionnaire,class observation,English assessment,and interview),the study finds a low but significant correlation between student engagement and learning achievement and different degree of correlation is shown in the three dimensions of student engagement.Only cognitive engagement is significantly related to learning achievement.What's more,most of interviewees do not believe in the association of engagement with learning achievement,but in the positive influence of cognitive engagement and affective engagement on behavioral engagement.The motivators and inhibitors of student engagement are related mainly to three aspects: instructors,peers and students themselves.The results indicates that enhancing students' cognitive engagement level is essential in achieving a good result and meanwhile a caring learning context and a more encouraging self-implication help to improve engagement level.