A Correlation Study Between Senior High School Students’ Self-efficacy And Participation In English Classroom

Nowadays, subjective education has become an important research focus ineducation reform. It has also been a primary issue in the implementation of qualityeducation. Many educators have realized that leading students to take participate inclassroom activities is the best way to fulfill students’ subjectivity. Effective teachingoutcomes could be achieved only when students take initiative part in classroomactivities. Self-efficacy, as one of the affective factors, is considered to exert a greatinfluence on students’ classroom participation and has received increasing attention. Agreat deal of research has indicated that learner’ self-efficacy plays a determinant rolefor learners’ behavior. By taking a review to research at home and abroad, plenty ofthem were conducted to study learners’ self-efficacy, but a limited number of them hasexplored the relationship between learners’ self-efficacy and their classroomparticipation. Therefore, the primary objective of present study was to investigate theimpact of senior students’ English self-efficacy on students’ English classroomparticipation.Accordingly, this research mainly probed into the following questions:(1) thepresent level of senior high school students’ English self-efficacy based on gender;(2)the current situation of students’ classroom participation based on gender;(3) therelationship between students’ English self-efficacy and their classroom participationas well as correlations with their English achievements. Both quantitative andqualitative methods were employed in this study.420senior two students from a keysenior high school in Shanxi Province took participate in accomplishing twoquestionnaires: English Learners’ Self-Efficacy Scale and Students’ ParticipationScale. For further explanation of these two scales, twelve of them were selected toparticipate in semi-structured interviews. Finally, all data were put into SPSSstatistical software.By means of analysis and discussion, the current research have found out that:(1)senior two students had a medium level of English self-efficacy and there were significant differences between male and female students;(2) the general situation ofstudents’ classroom participation was not very satisfactory and there existed nodifferences based on genders;(3) a statistically significant positive correlation existedbetween students self-efficacy and classroom participation, and learners’ Englishachievements played good predictive role for these two variables. It confirmed thatlearners’ English self-efficacy had a powerful impact on their classroom participation.Conversely, students’ active participation was conducive to strengthening theirefficacy level.The current study enriched self-efficacy theory and reaffirmed the correlationbetween students’ self-efficacy and participation. Recommendations were offered toclarify how to better play the role of research findings in the hope of cultivatinglearners’ self-efficacy and establishing harmonious environment for students’participation. At last, the limitations of present study were pointed out and suggestionsfor further research were also provided.