An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Bai Students’ Learning Attitude,Attribution And English Proficiency In Senior High School

From the existing researches and practical experience,it can be seen that both English learners? learning attitude and learning attribution play an important role in students? language acquisition.Therefore,if English teachers know well about relevant theories,guiding the students? attribution and helping students cultivate a good English learning attitude,it must be helpful to improve the situation both in English teaching and learning in the Bai ethnic minority areas.This study employed a mixed design of quantitative questionnaire survey and qualitative interview to study the relationship between 263 Bai ethnic senior high school students? learning attitude,attribution and English proficiency in Yunnan.The research questions are: 1)What is the general situation of Bai students? English learning attitude and attribution in senior high school? 2)What is the relationship between Bai students? learning attitude,attribution and English proficiency in senior high school? 3)Is there any important attitudinal or attributional predictor of the subjects? English proficiency? 4)Are there any significant differences in English learning attitude and attribution in regard to the demographic variables of the subjects?The questionnaire data were analyzed by SPSS 22.0 for Windows and the interview data were treated with meaning unit and content analysis.The results show that the participants have a significant,strong and positive attitude towards ethnic identity and foreign languages and cultures,but their attitude towards native speakers of English is moderate.The participants? English learning attitude towards foreign languages and cultures is significantly,positively and strongly correlated with their English performance and the participants? attitude towards foreign languages and cultures is an important predictor of their English proficiency.There are significant differences in the participants? attitude related to both sex and grades.The Bai students in senior high school prefer to attribute their English learning to the internal factor: effort,and they think that luck factor positively affects their success in English learning.The attribution of luck and attribution of situation are important predictors of the participants? English proficiency and there are significant differences in attribution of English learning in terms of the participants? grades and self-rated English proficiency.So,school administrators can establish cultural courses to give students chances to learn English in use.Teachers can better guide students? positive attitude and attribution and improve teaching based on students? learning situation.Bai students can try to achieve positive transfer between Bai language and English.