Investigation Into The Expectancy-Value Of Senior Students Of Non-key Middle Schools In English Learning

Expectation is first proposed by Tolman(1932),believing expectation is the individual's hypothesis on the events which will occur in the future.Lewin(1938)firstly defines value as the importance of an activity to individuals.As time goes by,numerous scholars involve their researches and findings to the conception of expectancy-value.To sum up,expectancy-value can be defined as the possibility which an individual may achieve a certain goal,and the value that an individual attaches to the task.Expectancy-value theory is considered as a great influential factor to motivation.Motivation is a perspective that directly affects language learning.In this way,the study of expectancy-value theory is well worthy and of great significance.By reviewing the former researches on the expectancy-value theory abroad and at home,this study aims to study senior students' expectancy-value in English learning of non-key high schools.In this essay,three main issues will be discussed: 1)the main features of senior students' expectancy-value in English learning;2)correlations among three components of expectancy-value and 3)the relationship between expectancy-value and English performance.The instruments employed by the author contain an expectancy-value questionnaire and a semi-structured interview.The former one can get quantitative results and the latter one can work as supportive materials.SPSS 17.0.will be needed to analyze the questionnaire and the final examination.There are 280 senior two students of three non-key middle schools,who are randomly selected in Nanchang.Deleting 26 useless questionnaires,254 questionnaires are valid.Some findings are as follows:Firstly,senior students of non-key middle schools have a medium level expectancy-value in English learning.By further analyzing,mean score of subjective value is the highest but that of expectation of success is the lowest.Between subjective value and expectation of success,it is study competitiveness ranking the second place among the three components of expectancy-value.Secondly,among three components of expectancy-value,every two components are positively related with each other.Correlation coefficient of subjective value and expectation of success,subjective value and study competitiveness,expectation ofsuccess and study competitiveness are respectively.451,.246 and.132.Therefore,subjective value and expectation of success have the strongest correlation.Finally,expectancy-value strongly relates with academic performance.Furthermore,among three components of expectancy-value,the correlation between expectation of success and English performance is the highest,followed by subjective value.However,there is no significant correlation between study competitiveness and English academic performance.According to these findings,some suggestions are given to improve senior students' expectancy-value of non-key high schools in English learning,followed by some limitations.