An Investigation Into High School Graduates’ Attributions In English Learning

Weiner’s attribution theory, perceived causes of success and failure, has received increasing attention in EFL research abroad and home in the recent two decades. According to Weiner’s attribution theory, it is necessary for English teachers to realize the importance of students’attributions in learning and teaching, because students’ attributions tend to affect the likelihood of undertaking achievement activities, the intensity of work at these activities, and the degree of persistence in the face of failure. In addition, attributions have impact on students’ expectancy, emotions, values, and beliefs about their ability, and, in turn, influence motivational variables. A variety of attribution studies at home show that attribution theory has a great impact on the students’ English outcomes.Therefore, the study, adopting the combination of questionnaire and interview methods, was conducted to investigate the attribution tendency of 136 high school graduates in Nanchang Institute of Technology and the connections between attribution and gender, academic discipline and proficiency.16 common factors for attribution were covered in a questionnaire and students were asked to what they attributed their English academic outcomes. Follow-up interviews investigated the origins of attributions.The results were analyzed by SPSS, and displayed that high school graduates tended to make positive attributions, as they highlighted internal and controllable factors more than external factors to explain why they succeeded or failed in learning English. In addition, some statistically significant differences were discovered between attribution and gender, academic discipline and proficiency in English learning. They were summarized as follows:(1) Female students made stronger internal and controllable attributions than did male students and more male students regarded luck as one influential factor for their English academic outcomes; (2) Arts students displayed more positive attributions toward learning English than did science students and science students they gave the second highest priority to emotion, only next to effort, to explain why they succeeded or failed in English leaning; (3) High achievers made more detailed attributions and attached more importance to the impact of confidence, teachers’evaluation, teachers’ help, health and ability than low achievers.Based on the results of the study, some problems in English learning and teaching emerged and some pedagogical suggestions may cure the problems. They are listed as follows:(1) Attach great importance to correlation between effort and English learning, when talking to students; Provide some learning methods or strategies that are best fit to learning English for students; Create a relaxing and active English learning environment. (2) Tell students about the impacts on English learning of different attributions and help them to make controllable attributions for English academic outcomes. (3) Give more concern to low achievers and downplay the role of ability in English learning.