A Study On Correlation Between Left-behind Children's Self-esteem,Anxiety And Personality And Their English Achievements

China' s reform and opening up promotes the development of urbanization,more and more rural middle-aged labor come to city for work.Most rural-urban migrants leave their children at home,which form a special social group that is Rural Left-Behind Children.According to the sample data of China's sixth national census,rural left-behind children are 61.03 million,accounting for 37.7%of the national rural children,21.9%of the national children.Most left-behind children's academic performance is not satisfactory,because of the lack of emotional communication,supervision and guidance.Comparing with the non-left-behind children,their academic performances are poorer.In recent years,the learning issue of left-behind children has attracted the whole society's attention.However,most researches focus on analyzing the main reasons of left-behind children's poor performances and putting forward strategies.Researches on inner psychological/emotional characteristics(such as anxiety)of left-behind children are still scanty.Studying the left-behind children's inner psychological/emotional characteristics can help them not only improve English learning achievements,but also promote the development of their mental health,finally promote their comprehensive development.This study chose 137 students of class eight from Yanzhuang Central Junior High school in Juxian,Shandong Province.The results of questionnaire and interview were analyzed by SPSS 21.0 in order to find out the current situation of the three important factors(self-esteem,anxiety and personality)of left-behind children,the relationship between the three factors and left-behind children's English achievements,and what kind of correlation between the three factors and their English achievements.The investigation shows that left-behind children have low self-esteem level,high anxiety level,and their personality tends to introvert type,comparing with non-left-behind children.Left-behind children's English achievements are poorer than non-left-behind children.As for correlations,the investigation indicates that left-behind children's self-esteem is significantly related to anxiety.The correlation between self-esteem and personality is weak,and the correlation between anxiety and personality is weak too.Left-behind children's self-esteem is positively related with their English achievements,anxiety is negatively related with their English achievements,and personality has low relevance with their English achievements.Through analyzing the data from questionnaire and interview,the author finds the main reasons caused the results above are left-behind children having little emotional communication with their parents,getting little education and guidance in daily studying,and lacking of attention from teachers and school.Therefore,the author puts forward the following pedagogical implications:English teachers should strength self-study and improve teaching methods;help left-behind-children raise self-esteem and reduce the level of anxiety;create a good atmosphere in the classroom;and establish harmonious teacher-student relationship.