An Empirical Study On Investigating Senior High School Students' Engagement In English Learning

The New English Curriculum Standard of General High School(Ministry of Education 2017)emphasizes the dominant position of students.It stresses that only when students actively participate in class activities,can they realize the construction and development of themselves.According to the standard,in order to change the status quo of students' passive acceptance of knowledge in traditional teaching,teacher should stimulate students' interest in English learning and encourage students to engage in class actively.What's more,the ability of students to explore and practice knowledge,analyze and solve problems should be improved.And their communication and cooperation ability should also be strengthened in English teaching process.Therefore,under the guidance of the new curriculum reform spirit,student engagement has become an important concept advocated in English teaching.Based on the background,the thesis put forward three research questions:1)What is the status quo of senior high school students' engagement in English learning? 2)What is the correlation of behavioral engagement,cognitive engagement and emotional engagement in their process of English learning? 3)What are the factors affecting students' engagement in English learning?Using methods of questionnaire and interview,and taking senior one students of a high school in Tianjin as the research subject,the thesis try to grasp the current situation of students' engagement in English learning,investigate the correlation between behavioral engagement,cognitive engagement and emotional engagement and analyze the factors affecting students' engagement in English learning.The descriptive statistical analysis of questionnaire showed that senior high school students' currently engagement in English class is high.The behavior engagement,cognitive engagement and emotional engagement are all at a high level.Through the confirmatory factor analysis of questionnaire,it can be found that the three dimensions are closely related.Behavior engagement and cognitive engagement are moderately related;behavior engagement and emotional engagement are moderately related;and cognitive engagement and emotional engagement are highly related.In addition,analysis of the interview content indicates that gender and teacher-student relationship are important factors that affect students' engagement.Finally,based on the above conclusions,this thesis provides some suggestions on how to improve the students' engagement in English learning.On the aspect of teacher,teacher should give students more opportunities to express themselves.Suitable learning methods should be taught to help students improved their learning autonomy.Besides,good teacher-student relationship should be established.Gender differences should be considered in English teaching process.On the aspect of students,they should make the purpose of English learning clear.Finding learning strategies that suit themselves is also important.Besides,they should pay attention to the association of English and daily life.And they should respect teachers and make their efforts to create good teacher-student relationship.