A Study On The Influence Of The Mental Health Status Of Left-behind Students Upon Their English Learning

China has been going through a special development at present, and a large number of migrant workers have made some great contributions to China's economic construction. But because of a variety of complex reasons, millions of children have become what we know as "left-behind children". And more importantly, this phenomenon is difficult to be eliminated in a short period of time. The social reforms that have taken place in recent years and the rapid economic development have brought great challenges to the mental health states of such children. The left-behind senior middle school students, in particular, suffer from varied mental issues. However, such issues are not adequately addressed yet. A quick review of previous studies shows that less has been written about the effect of mental health issues of left-behind senior middle school students on their school education, especially their English learning. Meanwhile, relatively little is known about wide-scale measures designed to improve left-behind senior middle school students'behavior and mental health conditions. However, left-behind middle school students as a special social group, whose living, learning and health conditions deserve our more special attention. This study aims to make a specific investigation in the mental health status of left-behind middle school students and how it influences left-behind middle school students'English learning, by basing on attribution theory, motivation theory, second language acquisition and non-intelligence factors theory. This study has been conducted in Badong No.2 Middle School of Badong County, Enshi City, Hubei province. The author selects 55 senior one students in the regular class as research subjects and adopts such instruments as questionnaire made by Russell, Horwitz et al, interview, and classroom observation to get basic data. Then the author will make an analysis of the collected data and finally puts forward some practical countermeasures to deal with these problems.The major findings of this study are as follows:firstly, left-behind senior middle school students are suffering from a broad range of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and loneliness, and so on. Secondly, negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, depression, loneliness and anger can do harm to left-behind senior middle school students'academic potential to a certain extent and largely reduce their language learning capacity. What's more, low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, loneliness, depression and social anxiety will tremendously influence left-behind middle school students'English learning in terms of motivation, learning goals and learning strategies. Thirdly, the family, the school, the society as well as left-behind senior middle school students' themselves do play a great role in their English learning. The favorable learning environment created by parents or caregivers, a teacher's knowledge level, the personality charm and belief are also found to be of great importance to the students' English learning. More importantly, the government' policies and social service system should never be ignored in the left-behind middle school students'English learning.Finally, according to the findings as above-mentioned, some useful suggestions are put forward from such perspectives of society, school, family and left-behind middle school students themselves in order to improve these students'living, learning and health conditions, and ultimately to promote their academic progress in English.