A Study Of English Majors’ Attribution For Spoken English Learning Achievements

Attribution theory was widely applied in socio-psychological sphere. Since1990s,Weiner’s model of attribution theory has been applied in foreign language teaching, yetwhich was not paid enough attention to. At present in China, most of the researcheson attribution are about general foreign language or English learning while researcheson specific aspects of English learning are still rare. The thesis intends to make aninvestigation of the spoken English attribution of English majors aiming to improvespoken English teaching and learning in China.The present study purposes to probe into the following three questions:(1) Howdo English major students evaluate their spoken English learning achievements?(2)What are the attributions of their spoken English learning achievements made by them?(3)Are there any differences in the attributions made by self-evaluated successful andaverage spoken English learners? If so, what are the major differences? In order tosearch for the answers to the research questions, both qualitative and quantitativemethods are adopted in the present study including the questionnaire and interview:1)Based on the framework of Werner’s attribution theory, a questionnaire namedAttribution on spoken English learning achievements for EFL learners is designed bythe researcher and then distributed to112students of English major from QingdaoUniversity of Science and Technology in order to find out EFL learners’ attributions,2)Ten subjects are selected randomly to participate in the interview after thequestionnaire, among whom there are five self-evaluated successful and fiveself-evaluated average spoken English learners. The interview is added not only tosearch for all the attributive factors affecting students’ spoken English learningincluding those that could not be measured through the questionnaire but also to obtainsome qualitative data to help the researcher to know more about their differences in attribution between successful and average spoken English learners. After the data iscolleted, the software SPSS16.0is adopted to analyze the data.The major findings of the research are the following: first, the self-evaluation onspoken English level of English majors is not balanced between the successful and theaverage groups, with the number of the self-evaluated successful spoken Englishlearners is half of that of the self-evaluated average students. Secondly, English majorsmainly attribute their spoken English learning performances to personal effort,psychological factors (learning motivation and learning style) and external factors(Learning atmosphere and teacher’s role). Lastly, the successful and average studentsmake a similar attribution on their spoken English study and the only significantdifference lies in the factor of learning style.Based on the research findings, some pedagogical implications are provided forfuture spoken English language teaching and learning focusing on the three followingaspects: attribution retraining, the teaching aspect and the learning aspect.