A Research On Narcissism And English Learning Achievement Motivation Of Senior High School Students

"New English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools (Experimental)" supplemented its content with emotional factors, learning strategies, cultural awareness and inter-cultural communicative competence, which reflects the people-oriented concept of education and the purposes of cultivating students’lifelong learning ability as well as students’sound personality. In recent years, more researchers have been doing surveys on narcissism in the non-clinical field and they hold that narcissism is a universal personality tendency. As one of the emotional factors, achievement motivation has always been a heated research topic of both psychologists and educators. However, few researchers focus their attention on the relationship between personality factor and achievement motivation. Therefore, the present study makes an analysis of the correlation between narcissism and English learning achievement motivation, in hope of offering some suggestions for senior high school students’English learning.In this study, two questionnaires are used as the research instruments, and the subjects are Grade Two students from three senior high schools in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The Senior High School Students’Narcissistic Personality Questionnaire is based on Zheng Yong and Huang Li’s Narcissistic Personality Questionnaire (2005). There are seven dimensions in this questionnaire:authority, superiority, entitlement, self-admiration of overt narcissism and vulnerability, entitlement, self-admiration of covert narcissism. The Senior High School Students’English Learning Achievement Motivation Scale is developed from the Achievement Motivation Scale (AMS), which was drawn up by Norwegian psychologist T. Jesnle & K. Mjgaro on the basis of Atkinson’s theory of achievement motivation and was revised by Chinese Ye Renmin and Norwegian Hagtvet (1992). It includes six dimensions:three sub-dimensions of motivation of pursuing success and three sub-dimensions of motivation of avoiding failure.The three research questions addressed in the present study are:(1) What is the overall situation of narcissism of senior high school students? (2) What is the overall situation of English learning achievement motivation of senior high school students? (3) Is there any correlation between narcissism and English learning achievement motivation of senior high school students? If yes, how are they related with each other?Through the study, the author has found out the following results:(1) Senior high school students’narcissism is at a medium level. Specifically speaking, the level of the subjects’authority of overt narcissism is the highest while that of their entitlement of covert narcissism of students is the lowest. (2) The overall situation of English learning achievement motivation of senior high school students stays at a slightly high level, but the subjects’motivation of pursuing success when facing uncertain tasks is not high. (3) Senior high school students" narcissism and English learning achievement motivation have a medium high positive correlation with each other.Based on these findings, some suggestions are put forward for students, teachers and parents to help students form healthy personality and high English learning achievement motivation. For students, they are supposed to know themselves well, have a mighty heart and enhance confidence in English learning. For teachers, they should guide students to set up correct value concept and learn to make objective self-assessments and cultivate students’interest and positive attributional styles in English learning. For parents, they should treat students with love and strict requirements properly, exercise students’will and create relaxing family atmosphere for them.