The Investigation Of Middle School Students’ Communal Utility Value Towards English Learning And Intervention Study

As an important part of the Expectancy-Value Model,utility value refers to the usefulness of tasks to achieve short-term or long-term goals.With the development of theory,more and more researchers have verified that utility value can be classified into personal utility value and communal utility value and called on more attention to be paid to the latter.Communal utility value refers to the usefulness of a task to a person’s communal goals,such as forming relationships with others and helping others.Communal utility value intervention can effectively improve individuals’ motivation and performance to complete tasks.Therefore,from the perspective of English learning motivation,this study focuses on the specific dimension of communal utility value,"helping others",investigates middle school students’ perceived utility value for English learning in China,and designs a communal utility value intervention to explore its role in improving students’ English learning motivation and academic performance.The first study used questionnaires to investigate the learning motivation of all the students in Grade six,Grade seven,and Grade eight in a middle school in Shanghai(n = 369)and used openended questions to learn about students’ perceived utility value of learning English.The survey results show that 71.5% of middle school students think that English learning has utility value,whereas only3.5% of middle school students think that English learning has communal utility value.Also,it is found that students from Grade 8 perceive English learning as less useful than students from Grade 6and Grade 7.The second study adopts quasi-experimental research to design and carry out communal utility value intervention for middle school students to learn English.In this study,7 classes were randomly selected from the classes participating in the first study as the intervention group(n = 192),and 3classes were randomly selected as the control group(n = 77).Before and after the intervention,the researcher investigated students’ English learning motivation(including communal utility value,interest,positivity,importance,self-efficacy,and growth mindset)and learning performance(English test scores).As for the intervention,students in the control group attend normal learning activities.Students in the intervention group are asked to read short English articles describing the communal utility value of English learning and complete relevant writing tasks once a week for seven weeks.The results show that,after participating in the intervention program,the students in the intervention group scored higher in terms of perceived utility value,and perceived importance for English learning,and demonstrated higher scores for growth mindset than the students in the control group.In summary,this study found that Chinese middle school students do perceive communal utility value for English learning and that communal utility value intervention can effectively enhance their English learning motivation.The results provide valuable data from Chinese participants in the field of learning motivation and provide a reference for educational researchers and practitioners to conduct communal utility value intervention.