A Study On The Correlation Between Students' Engagement And Students' Achievement Of Junior High School English Class

With the transformation from "teacher-centered" to "student-centered" in teaching,students' engagement in class has drawn attention from teachers and educational researchers.Based on previous researches,this dissertation divides students' engagement into three dimensions,behavioral engagement,cognitive engagement and emotional engagement.In China,for junior high school students,achievement is an important standard to measure whether they can enter senior high school.And most of students' time is spent in school class.Therefore,it's of great importance to explore the correlation between students' engagement and student's achievement.This dissertation firstly reviews relative researches and theoretical basis of students' engagement and settles from three dimensions in students' engagement to further explore the relationship between students' engagement and students'achievement.This dissertation selected 115 grade three students in an ordinary junior high school in Wuhan as research subjects and distributed the "junior high school English class students' engagement questionnaire",collecting the data and then the data were analyzed by descriptive analysis,independent samples t-test,One-way ANOVA,Pearson correlation analysis and linear regression analysis to explore the status quo of students' engagement in class and its correlation with students'achievement;the following three questions are supposed to answer through these,(1)In junior high school English class,what's the status quo of students'engagement?(2)What,if any,is the correlation between students-engagement three dimensions and students' academic achievement?(3)What can teachers do to.promote students' engagement in order to improve their achievement?The major findings of this research are as follows:In junior high school English class,students' behavioral engagement gets the highest average scores while cognitive engagement gets the lowest average scores.There is no significant difference of students' engagement between male students and female students.Students with different achievement level have significant difference in cognitive engagement and emotional engagement,especially for students with English learning difficulties,they get higher scores in the low-level,depending strategies,the sense of anxiety and boredom.In the dimension of behavioral engagement,concentration is positively correlated with students-with-English-learning-difficulties achievement,digging-into is positively correlated with entire students' achievement and both of them have positive effects on students' achievement.In the dimension of cognitive engagement,low-level and depending strategies are negatively correlated with entire students' achievement in a weak level.In the dimension of emotional engagement,students' sense of enjoyment is positively correlated with the entire students' achievement in a weak level,but it is significantly and positively correlated with the achievement of excellent students and students with English learning difficulties.Besides,there is a negative correlation between students' sense of anxiety and boredom with entire students' achievement and both of them have no facilitation to students' achievement.Based on above findings about the correlation between different dimensions and students' achievement,the suggestions for teachers to promote students' engagement in class are firstly to develop benign classroom atmosphere for students mainly from forming learning climate,class unity and creating class file.Secondly,efficient classroom management should be carried out including orderly but not too strict classroom,applying classroom rules to the whole class and properly assigned seats.Thirdly,a good,harmonious relationship should be formed which includes respecting students,following students' physical and psychological features,and encouraging students to ask questions boldly.Lastly,students with English learning difficulties should be paid more attention to,involving being invited to answer questions and join in "two-people groups".And the teachers can help their preview,correct their homework face to face,instruct students to master effective ways to remember words.Besides,students' confidence should be built and sense of relatedness should be boosted as well by having individual face-to-face conversations with them and helping them find their own roles or positions in class and school.