The Correlations Between Non-intellectual Factors And English Achievements Of Senior High School Students

With the development and progress of foreign language education,more and more scholars and researchers are interested in psychological factors which impact language pedagogy.At the beginning,the domestic scholars used the scales designed by foreign scholars to study non-intellectual factors,intelligence and learning.In recent years,domestic scholars pay more attention to the research and cultivation of non-intellectual factors and have composed some new scales of non-intellectual factors which are more suitable for Chinese students in different ages based on the basic national conditions.Many of them have started to explore the relationship between non-intellectual factors and learning,students' Chinese achievements,mathematical achievements,physics achievements and so on.However,few focus on the correlations between non-intellectual factors and English achievements,especially in senior high school.Based on the New English Curriculum Standard of Senior High School in 2017,in the process of teaching,teachers should not only teach the book knowledge,but also need to pay attention to cultivating students' culture awareness,thinking quality,learning ability and language ability.In a word,doing research on non-intellectual factors and senior high school students' English achievements is of great importance.This study,therefore,aims at exploring the status quo of non-intellectual factors,the comparison on gender in non-intellectual factors and the correlations between non-intellectual factors and English achievements among senior high school students to improve the students' English learning and level through reasonable cultivation.This is an empirical study which uses questionnaire to measure senior high school students' non-intellectual factors.It collected students' English achievements,including listening achievements,reading achievements and writing achievements,respectively.In accordance to Professor Yan's narrow definition of non-intellectual factors and the scale designed by Qi,five factors which included fifty items were selected as the questionnaire of this study.185 questionnaires were sent to the students in the High School Affiliated to Yunnan Normal University in Grade 2 in which 164 questionnaires were collected validly.With the help of Excel 2007 and SPSS 22.0,statistic analysis of data went well.The listening,reading and writing achievements were collected to clarify if there are any special correlations between them and non-intellectual factors in a more detailed way.The results showed:(1)The non-intellectual factors and English achievements of the students in the High School Affiliated to Yunnan Normal University were in the middle or above.(2)There is no any significant gender difference in senior high school students' non-intellectual factors.(3)The five non-intellectual factors correlated with English achievements significantly.Willing to excel others(WI)and cognitive interest(CI)showed the highest correlation.In addition,listening achievements was correlated to achievement motivation(AM),WI and CI.CI was the most significant factor.The five non-intellectual factors all correlated to reading achievements.CI had the highest correlation.Writing achievements was significantly correlated with all the five non-intellectual factors.CI still had the highest correlation.Through the empirical study on non-intellectual factors and English achievements of senior high school students,students' non-intellectual factors have gradually matured and there is no significant gender difference.The cultivation and optimization of non-intellectual factors play an important role in the improvement of students' English achievements.Especially the cultivation of interest is of great importance for students' English learning.In order to improve students' learning interest,English teachers may use various teaching methods,design rich learning activities and expand interesting extracurricular knowledge.Simultaneously,it is necessary to help students build good learning habits,keep enthusiasm and enterprising and stimulate students' learning motivation.It is worth noting that English teachers may make a special effort to cultivate students' learning interest,learning motivation and enterprise instead of learning awareness and learning stamina when improving students' listening achievements.Of course,this study has some limitations,but it is expected that more scholars will conduct more research in this field.