The Effects Of Differentiated Instruction Of Students' English Learning Attitude And Academic Achievements In A Technician College

In technician class,students differ enormously among their intellectual and nonintellectual factors such as ages,English proficiency learning ability and so on,which has brought huge challenges for traditional one-size-fits-all English class.In order to strengthen the curriculum construction of technician English and facilitate students' personalized development,in 2009,the Ministry of Education issued English Curriculum for Secondary Vocational College,which required that teacher should respect students' individual differences,implement differentiated teaching and instruct students in accordance with their aptitude to make them achieve optimal learning outcome.Thus,the adoption of differentiated instruction in technician classroom has become an inevitable trend for vocational English reform.As an influential teaching pedagogy,the effectiveness of differentiated instruction has drawn wide attention of scholars both at home and abroad.Despite a few studies on the relationships among differentiated instruction,learning attitude and achievement,the effects of differentiated instruction on English learning attitude and achievements of students in the context of technician college has still remained unexplored.Besides,in Shen's(2009)opinion,English learning attitude comprises learning belief,instrumental motivation,integrative motivation,learning interest and learning environment.However,the previous studies of differentiated instruction on English learning attitude have only investigated the dimensions of learning interest and learning motivation.The influence of differentiated instruction on other dimensions such as learning belief and learning environment are required to further explored.Thus,this study tries to explore the effects of differentiated instruction on overall English learning attitude and its five dimensions(learning belief,instrumental motivation,integrative motivation,learning interest and learning environment),as well as the English achievements of students in a technician college with mixed research methods.The research questions are as follows:(1)To what extent does differentiated instruction influence students' English learning attitude in a technician college?(2)To what extent does differentiated instruction influence students' Englishachievements in a technician college?In order to answer the above questions,both quantitative and qualitative approaches are applied.With respect to the quantitative approach,sixty eight freshmen majoring in Computer Network Application from two intact classes(experimental class,N=36;control class,N=32)in Zibo Technician College participated in this quasi-experiment.Regarding qualitative approach,semi-structured interview was adopted.Six interviewee were selected and interviewed,three from the control group and the other from the experimental group.During the teaching experiment,the author tried to implement differentiated instruction in terms of following procedure.Firstly,group the students according to their different learning styles;then,layer the learning tasks and materials and modify them;finally,layer the homework.Data were collected via questionnaire survey of English learning attitude,English exam scores and semi-structured interview.Afterwards,quantitative data from the questionnaire and exam scores were processed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences(SPSS)20.0.The main results of this thesis are summarized as follows:(1)Differentiated instruction is more effective in cultivating students' overall English learning attitude than traditional one-size-fits-all approach.To be more specific,it is more capable of enhancing students' learning belief,improving students' instrumental and integrative motivation,arousing their interest towards English class and creating better learning environment than traditional one-size-fits-all approach.(2)Differentiated instruction is more capable of improving students' English academic achievements compared with traditional one-size-fits-all approach.To be more specific,it is more effective in enhancing students' reading achievements than traditional one-size-fits-all approach.