A Study Of Relationship Among English Learning Attributions,Academic Self-concept And Academic Achievements Of College Students

Based on Weiner's three-dimensional success and failure attribution model and Shavelson's multidimensional and hierarchical self-concept model,this research explored the relationship among students' academic attribution,academic self-concept and their academic achievements with an attribution training experiment,under the big context of college English learning,in the hope of providing useful teaching implications for English education.With 147 sophomores as subjects and questionnaires and tests as instruments,the findings of the research are that:(1)College students tend to attribute their academic success to effort,luck and ability,and attribute their academic failure to effort in their English learning.Significant major difference exists in their English learning attribution beliefs.College students generally have slightly negative English self-concepts.Both gender difference and major difference lie in their English self-concepts.(2)College students' English self-concept correlates positively with their ability-success attribution belief and effort-success attribution belief,and negatively with their luck-success attribution belief,ability-failure attribution belief and luck-failure attribution belief at a significant level.Three kinds of attribution beliefs(ability-failure attribution,ability-success attribution and luck-success attribution)have the predictive power over students' English self-concept.Their luck-success attribution belief and luck-failure attribution belief correlate negatively with their English achievements at a significant level.And the luck-success attribution belief also has weak predictive power over English achievements.And their English self-concept has a strong positive correlation with their English achievements.Meanwhile their English self-concept has predictive power over their English achievements.Students' English self-concept along with their ability-failure attribution belief has predictive power for their English achievements.(3)After the attribution training students received attribution instruction had a stronger tendency of attributing their academic failure to luck and maintained their context-success attribution belief and English self-concept but had poorer English learning results.The implication for English teaching is that teachers should attach more importance to ability to guide students to shape adaptive academic attribution beliefs and meanwhile eliminate gender bias to help students build positive academic self-concepts.