A Study Of The Causes Of English Underachievers In Middle School And Make-up Strategies

In English teaching, there are many English underachievers in China. For various reasons, English becomes their obstacle. After entering junior high school, especially the second semester of Grade Eight, as English learning becomes deeper and deeper, the polarization among the students is more and more serious, resulting in more and more English underachievers’ English becoming worse. This even results in a considerable part of the underachievers eventually giving up learning English. However, how these students come into being and how to help them are what the author has been paying attention to. Only by studying the causes of the English underachievers, can the English teachers take effective measures to help them to improve their abilities to learn English.After reading a lot of literature, the author finds that since the middle of the 20th century,various disciplines have begun to concern the underachievers. Research at home and abroad for the underachievers has more than one hundred years’ history, and it has made remarkable results. The researchers study the reasons of the underachievers from the physiological and psychological aspects. Then they demonstrate through the social practice and discipline experiment and put forward the solution to underachiever problem. In their studies, there are some inadequacies. For example, the researchers of different disciplines only study the underachievers from the perspective of their own subject, lack of communication among different subjects. So the conclusion is not comprehensive and careful enough and the problem can not be solved thoroughly. At the same time, the research for the transformation of the underachievers in school and the results is very limited.The thesis is based on our junior high school English underachievers. The author analyzes the causes of the English underachievers by using questionnaire and interview. After that, the author selects some of the English underachievers to help them. According to the survey, English underachiever is the result of internal factors and external factors. Among these factors, a solid base in English, interest in English, English learning strategies, attitude,and self-confidence are internal factors. External factors include family, school, teachers, and society and so on. In view of this, the author tries to help some of the English underachievers to improve their English. For example, the author gives them more care, helps to change their attitudes towards English, stimulates their interests in English and teaches them English learning strategies. After half a year, some of them have got obvious improvements and progress in these aspects. So, it’s very important for the English teachers to help those English underachievers in their English learning.