A Study On EFL Grit And The Correlation With English Academic Performance In High School

Factors affecting students’ academic performance have been a key issue in the fields of education and psychology.Grit was found to positively impact academic performance.Relevant studies focused on domain-general grit and its impact.However,as the assumption of domain specificity was paid much attention to,emerging research has targeted grit in specific domains,for example,grit in English as a foreign language learning(EFL grit).Also,existing studies mainly aimed at middle school and college students,while there was little attention on high school students who are facing a high-stakes examination.Hence,applying an adapted grit scale specific to EFL grit,the present study conducted EFL grit research,based on the EMPATHICS model,on 192 Chinese high school students in Xi’an with quantitative and qualitative research methods.The research questions were as follows:(1)What is the current situation of high school students’ EFL grit? Are there any grade and gender differences in EFL grit?(2)Is there a correlation between EFL grit and English academic performance of high school students? The results indicated that the high school students reported an above-moderate EFL grit and there were no differences in EFL grit in terms of grades and genders.A significantly positive correlation was found between EFL grit and English academic performance of the high school students.The present study confirmed the correlation between EFL grit and English academic performance and provided some pedagogical implications to develop EFL grit,which is beneficial to improving English academic performance of high school students.