An Investigation Into English Class Engagement Of Students With Learning Difficulties In Junior Middle School

New curriculum standard requires education must focus on all students and serve to promote their healthy growth and development,however,the number of students with learning difficulties is increasingly growing in junior middle school and it is far more than that of primary and senior school.Therefore,it is rather urgent for English teachers to transform these underachievers.Classroom is an important place where the students learn and accept new knowledge and most of learning difficulties in students' English learning mainly take place in classroom.Extracurricular instruction,to a great extent,is purely formal,which can not completely help solve these learning difficulties.This fully indicates that classroom engagement plays a critical role in English learning for students with learning difficulties.Nevertheless,a number of teachers seem to have a misunderstanding of students' class engagement.Some teachers think these students with learning difficulties completely do not engage in the class so more concern on them is futile.Therefore,the study on English class engagement of students with learning difficulties has a greatly theoretical and practical significance for current English class.This research mainly adopts three methods: questionnaire,class observation,interview.Questionnaires are classified into A and B.Questionnaire A is composed entirely of students' behavioral engagement,cognitive engagement and affective engagement.Questionnaire B mainly discusses from four dimensions: participation motivation,participation way,participation evaluation,participation effect.Questionnaire A is used to collect the quantitative statistics while questionnaire B is used to do qualitative analysis.The research strives to adopt synthetic methods to reflect the actual situation of English class engagement of students with learning difficulties and seek some ways to improve it.Besides,this study adopts class observation and interview to explorethe factors influencing underachievers' participation.Class observation is used to record participation time of underachieves and their class performance.Interview is designed for students and teachers.This research mainly focuses on the following questions:What is the actual situation of English class engagement of underachieved students?;Are there any difference among high,medium and low achievers' engagement in English class?;What factors influence the English class engagement of students with learning difficulties in junior middle school?.The results show that the mean of behavioral engagement,cognitive engagement and affective engagement of students with learning difficulties in English class are relatively low;there is a significant difference among high,medium and low achievers.Comparatively speaking,the behavioral engagement of underachieved students is little and their cognitive engagement is limited to using surface and reliable strategies.In other words,in English class,they prefer to memorize and practice mechanically than think independently.They frequently rely upon teachers' help.Furthermore,they usually do not feel the sense of success and enjoyment,instead,they are more easily anxious and bored in class.Besides,underachieved students do not have a clear recognition of participation motivation and participation way.Their participation time is extremely little and their participation is normally passive;furthermore,teachers also pay little attention on underachieved students and rarely make them do self-evaluation and peer assessment.Besides,the study also finds their participation effect is unsatisfactory.Although they participate in the class,they are virtually unable to understand and master knowledge they are learning.In addition,there are many other factors which influence their participation such as the attraction of course,the personal enchantment of teachers,and the relationship between teachers and students etc.At last,this thesis suggests some ways to promote the English class engagement of students with learning difficulties: Teachers should classify underachievers carefully and take correspondent measures;elaborately design teaching;stimulate the students' interest and build the new evaluation mechanism;students should set clear learning goals and learn to reflect etc.