Investigation Into Problem Solving Ability Perception Among Senior High School Students And Its Correlation With Their English Achievement

problem solving ability perception has been studied extensively by researchers for decades.It is generally defined as an goal-directed sequence of cognitive operations and is assumed as one of the most important cognitive skills in any profession together with daily life.The outstanding characteristics of this ability incorporate the following three parts: the nature of a cognitive process;goal-directed activity;the complexity(and hence difficulty)of the problem influenced by one's current knowledge and skills.In fact,researches show that students' problem solving ability perception not only affects their academic learning but also influences their further study even normal development in society to some extent.Although there are boundless of foreign researches on problem solving ability perception in the fields like biology,physics and math etc,there is few related to art subjects like history,literature or politics let alone English learning among senior high school students when we referred to related articles.Thus,its significance and necessities should have been paid enough attention both at home and abroad.A total of 143 participants from a normal urban high school in Nanchang were randomly selected by the author to conduct this investigation in June,2016.After finishing a questionnaire with 32 items and three sub-dimensions: problem solving confidence,approach-avoidance style(attitude tendency towards problem solving)and personal control,a smaller number of ten participants were also invited to a semi-structural interview to enrich the data.The combination of questionnaire,interview,and subjects' final English exam will help us get closer to the answer to the important questions in this study:1.What are the characteristics of participants' problem solving ability perception perception and the specific situation of its three sub-dimensions including problem solving confidence,approach-avoidance style and self-control among senior high school students ?2.Is there any difference of problem solving ability perception perception among males and females,higher and lower English achievers? If yes,to what degree ?3.How does participants' problem solving ability perception perception correlate with their English achievement ?By means of qualitative and quantitative analysis,we can get the results as following:1)The overall mean score of these participants' problem solving ability perception is 106.05(106.5 > 96),which suggests students in senior high school obtain average problem solving ability perception.For its three sub-dimensions,participants have reached moderate level of problem solving confidence and approach-avoidance style on problem solving,as their mean scores are 36.55 and55.38,which are both higher than their passing line 33 and 45.However,their self-control in problem solving is low because its mean value is 14.11 and it's below the passing line 15.2)The results show there is significant difference of overall problem solving ability perception as well as self-control among boys and girls by independent sample test(p= 0.006 < 0.05;p= 0.035 < 0.05).On the whole,boys' mean value is higher than girls' when we compare the two groups' average scores.3)There's no significant difference of problem solving ability perception among higher and lower English achievers,but the mean values of higher proficiency group are a little bit higher than the lower proficiency group in problem solving ability perception,problem solving confidence,approach-avoidance style except self-control.4)With regard to the correlation between participants' problem solving ability perception and their English performance,the results indicate there's no significant correlation between them.Meanwhile,there's negative correlation between one's English performance and their emotional self-control during problems solving(p=-0.09).In summary,this study will throw lights on a new topic,help us understand the correlation between problem solving ability perception and English performance thus may offer some enlightenment to further study as well as English teaching.