A Study On The Effect Of Course Learning Interest On Vocational School Students' English Proficiency

Both correlation studies and experimental studies at home and abroad have been trying to clarify the profound facilitative effect of interest on learning from different perspectives, with the majority now revolving around the two broad conceptions: situational and individual interest. Supporting evidences have been found in different educational settings; nevertheless, there seems to be a lack of research on Chinese vocational school students' English course learning interest. Besides, whether the situational interest or the individual interest plays a more significant role in vocational school students' English proficiency? Few studies in literature are found to do systematic research in this aspect. Therefore, the present study aims to answer the following two questions:(1) Is there a positive correlation between vocational school students' Englishcourse learning interest and language proficiency?(2) Which plays a more significant role in vocational school students' Englishproficiency, situational interest or individual interest?The research was conducted among the first-year students from September 2014 to January 2015 in a vocational school in Guangdong Province. Built on Schraw and Lehman's(2001) framework of the structure of interest, it employs Keller's(2006) copyrighted Course Interest Survey to examine the subjects' interest in the English course on the one hand and the Chinese Public English Test System(Level 2) to assess their English proficiency on the other to figure out the correlation of language proficiency with course learning interest in general and with situational and individual interest separately. It is found that(1) the vocational school students' interest in the English course, including situational and individual, is at the intermediate level;(2) vocational school students' overall English proficiency is greatly influenced by their interest in the course, with writing ability being affected more than reading ability; and(3) individual interest plays a more important role than situational interest in the learning process and the learning outcome.At the same time, supplemented with classroom observations and interviews with some students and teachers, the study attempted to provide explanations for the findings in terms of Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis(1982) and Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory(1985). Finally, based on the results, some effective methods of how to stimulate and sustain vocational school students' interest in the English course so as to improve their language proficiency are proposed. Hopefully, this study can extend the existing interest research to the specific field of English teaching and learning in secondary vocational schools, providing some information for curriculum developers to design interesting and motivating learning tasks and for teachers to adopt effective teaching strategies to boost students' interest in learning English.