A Study On The Relationship Between English Academic Emotions And Achievement Goals Of High School Students

Academic emotions as a non-intelligence factor have an crucial effect on students' learning process,academic performance,the teacher-student relationship,usage of learning strategies and so on.English academic emotions specifically refer to all emotions related to all kinds of English academic activities that students experienced in English teaching or English learning,it includes positive-high arousal,positive-low arousal,negative-high arousal and negative-low arousal.What's more,achievement goals as a new direction of motivational research are also an indispensable factor for students' English learning,which mainly describes individual's competence from a social-cognitive approach and are divided into performance-approach goal,performance-avoidance goal,mastery-approach goal and mastery-avoidance goal in this study.Some previous researches have proved that there exists certain correlation between academic emotions and achievement goals.But few of them have taken high school students as subjects and investigated English academic emotions.And rare studies have explored whether achievement goals have predicative effect on English academic emotions so far.Hence,it is necessary to carry out such an investigation to figure out the general features of English academic emotions and achievement goals of high school students.The research was conducted among 260 high school students in two high schools in Pingxiang with a English academic emotions questionnaire and achievement goals questionnaire.It aims to examine the overall characteristics of English academic emotions and achievement goals,to figure out whether there is significant gender difference of high school students in English academic emotions and achievement goals,to explore the correlation between English academic emotions and achievement goals and examine whether achievement goals have predicative effect on English academic emotions.The results of data analysis can be concluded as follows:(1)The mean score of English academic emotions is 113.85,less than the cut-off sore 127,which means high school students' English academic emotions are at the negative level.Among the four sub-dimensions of English academic emotions,students have a positive inclination on negative-low arousal,positive-high arousal,and negative-high arousal while students' inclination on positive-low arousal is at the low level.In terms of achievement goals,the mean score of achievement goals is 92.53,less than the cut-off score 101,suggesting that high school students' achievement goals are at the low level.Students have a positive inclination on performance-approach goal and mastery-approach goal,and performance-avoidance goal.However,students' inclination on mastery-avoidance goal is at the low level.(2)There is no significant gender difference among high school students in English academic emotions,and both male and female students' English academic emotions are at the negative level.Also,no gender difference exists in the four sub-dimensions of English academic emotions.Nevertheless,the gender difference is significant in high school students' achievement goals,especially for mastery-avoidance goal and performance-avoidance goal.(3)The correlation between English academic emotions and achievement goals is significant,which indicates that the higher scores students got in achievement goals,the more positive English academic emotions they have.(4)Achievement goals have strong predication towards English academic emotions.Specifically speaking,performance-approach goal and mastery-approach goal enter into the regression equation model.Performance-approach goal can explain37.5% variations of positive-high arousal,while both of them together can explain42.4% variations of positive-high arousal,which means that performance-approach goal and mastery-approach goal have strong predicative ability on positive-high arousal.Based on the findings above,some pedagogical implications are put forward to cultivate students' positive English academic emotions and correct achievement goals:students can read some psychological books to self-regulate their English academic emotions,the instructors should guide students to be mastery-approach goal oriented.And the limitations of the study and some suggestions for future studies are offered at last.