A Study On The Correlations Among Academic Buoyancy,Learning Motivation And English Achievement Of Junior High School Students From The Perspective Of Positive Psychology

The National English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022Edition)explicitly states that English teachers should focus on cultivating students’ learning motivation,building up students’ self-confidence,and inspiring their will to overcome academic setbacks,so as to achieve the teaching goal of improving students’ English achievement.This highlights the importance of learners’ psychological factors in learning English.Positive psychology offers a new perspective on the study of students’ psychological and academic problems.Positive psychology is an emerging field of psychology in the United States launched at the end of 20 th century.In 2012,positive psychology was introduced to the field of second language acquisition,generating a wave of research at home and abroad.Academic buoyancy and learning motivation are two psychological variables under positive psychology.Many foreign scholars have investigated the relationship among academic buoyancy,learning motivation and second language achievement from different perspectives.But there is a gap on the correlation between academic buoyancy,learning motivation and English achievement in the Chinese context.Thus,the study is conducted to investigate academic buoyancy and learning motivation of junior high school students on the basis of the previous studies.The study attempts to explore the correlations among academic buoyancy,learning motivation and English achievement of junior high school students.Specifically,the study aims to answer the following three questions:1.What is the level of junior high school students’ academic buoyancy?2.What is the level of junior high school students’ learning motivation?3.What are the correlations among academic buoyancy,learning motivation and English achievement?In order to answer the above questions,a total of 300 junior high school students in Subsidiary High School of Taiyuan Normal University participated in the study.Questionnaires,interviews and English midterm exam are used to collect data.Quantitative data from the questionnaires are analyzed using descriptive statistics,independent sample t-test,Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analysis.Interview is recorded and transcribed into written texts for analysis.English midterm exam is used to analyse their level of English achievements.The results are as follows:Firstly,junior high school students have a relatively high level of academic buoyancy.There is a significant gender difference in academic buoyancy of junior high school students.Significant difference is also found in academic buoyancy of students between high-level group and low-level group.Secondly,junior high school students have a high level of learning motivation.Significant differences are found between male students and female students in learning objective,learning behavior and learning desire,but no significance is found in learning attitude.There are significant differences in learning motivation and its four dimensions of students between high-level group and low-level groupThirdly,there are positive correlations among academic buoyancy,learning motivation and English achievement of junior high school students.Academic buoyancy is significantly and positively correlated with English achievement.Learning motivation is significantly and positively correlated with English achievement.Academic buoyancy is significantly and positively correlated with learning motivation.And learning motivation plays a partially mediating role between academic buoyancy and English achievement.Based on the major findings,foreign language educators can take some positive interventions on academic buoyancy and learning motivation of junior high school students from the perspective of positive psychology in order to develop positive psychological qualities of learners,thereby improving their English achievements.