1. Introduction
1.1 Research Background
The Study of attitudes dates back to about half a century ago. Since the socio-educationalmodel was proposed，large quantities of researches on attitudes dominated by Gardner havebeen conducted. A large number of empirical studies showed that the language learners'attitudes towards the target language played an important role in the process of foreignlanguage learning. In the process of learning foreign language, a positive attitude helpslearners to learn foreign language，while a negative attitude hinders foreign language learning.Students' attitudes will affect their behaviors in learning choices，the degree of effort andpersistence in the process of language learning, even the way of thinking and emotionalreaction in the learning process. The students who have correct learning attitudes will givemore investments, spend more time and efforts in the completion of learning tasks. When theyface with the challenges and difficulties, the students who have correct learning attitudes willshow more perseverance to overcoming the difficulties. These students are able to fullyrecognize and estimate the nature of the facing tasks and encountering difficulties. They candeal with the complex information and actively seek the methods to solving the problems.What's more, in above process, these students who hold correct learning attitude are rarelytroubled by negative emotions，such as stress, anxiety and so on. While the students who haveno correct learning attitudes always do not have confidences to complete the task. When theyface with the task，the students who have no correct learning attitudes will doubt their abilitiesand lack of self-confidences, even give up themselves in the face of difficulties. Wha1;，s more，these students who have no correct learning attitudes consider individual defects andinsufficient abilities too much in the process of completing the task. They are likely to imagethe difficulties are greater than the actual. All of these will hinder their abilities to playeffectively. However, there is still some room left for research, especially in the context ofChina. Based on the socio-educational model，the present study attempted to examine thegeneral situation of first-ye紅 higher vocational college students' attitudes.
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1.2 Significance of the Present Study
The research on attitudes and attributions abroad have been thriving for decades，yet therelated studies in China, especially in terms of the socio-educational model, has lagged farbehind. To bridge this gap, it is quite necessary to carry out more studies in this field.We all know that non-English major higher vocational college students are a major partof English learners in China. Compared with junior and senior middle school students, highervocational college students are more adaptable to student-centered teaching style. Andfirst-year college students are in the transition from high-school learning style to collegelearning style. When in high school, the majority of students, if not all of them, were mainlyconcerned about English scores whether they were motivated to leam the language or not. And they paid less attention to their attitudes and attributions towards the English-speakingcommunity and culture. However, when in college，they do not have to face such examinationpressures as the National Matriculation English Test, so what are their attitudes andattributions towards English learning? In view of the above mentioned points, the presentstudy wants to examine the general situation of learner attitudes and attributions amongnon-English major students in Hubei Finance and Taxation Higher Vocational College. It ishoped that such a study could shed some light on the overall picture of learner attitudes andattributions among first-year higher vocational college students，that it could draw somepreliminary conclusions and offer some suggestions for college English teachers and studentsin their teaching and learning, and that it could provide a reference for further research.
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2. Review of Literature
2.1 Attitude Theory
Allport (1924; 58) once given a definition of attitude in the literature of socialpsychology; "An attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness，organized throughexperience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual response to allobjects and situation with which it is related.” Gardner also proposed that individual'sattitude is an evaluative reaction to some referent or attitude object, inferred on the basis ofthe individual's beliefs or opinions about the referent，，(Gardner, 1985: 9) Attitude will letpeople make their own judgments or decisions to some specific problems in some specificsituations. Attitude refers to a persistent view with understanding, affective components andbehavioral tendency to a person，a matter, or some ideas. It is an internalized ychologicalphenomenon with the characteristic of propensity, namely a inner psychological tendency. Itplays a decisive role to series of behaviors and subjective feelings in our real life.
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2.2 Attribution Theory
Attributions are the explanations and evaluations to the reasons of others' or their ownactivities and the results. In the daily study and work，everyone will experience the successesand failures. At the same time，people will go and find the causes of the successes and failures.These are the attributions of achievement behaviors. People will attribute the success andfailure to different reasons, and generate the corresponding psychological changes，thus affecttheir behaviors in the future.Attribution theory was first proposed by Heider in 1958. Then，it developed by Weiner in1985 and became a main research paradigm. The theory are sort of perceived causalexplanations of outcomes to one's behavior. What's more，it is also a kind of beliefs. It refersto individuals' perceptions regarding causes of outcomes and concern with the waysindividuals perceive these causes. Domyei ever said: “The studies of how causal ascriptionsof past failures and successes influence future goal expectancy." (Domyei，1994: 16) This isthe main theme in attribution theory. Weiner (1976: 52) discussed three dimensions withinperceived causes of success and failure. They are locus，stability, and controllability. Locusrefers to whether the cause is internal or external; stability refers to explain whether theperceived causes remain the same or change or not; controllability refers to whether the causeis controlled or not by the individual.
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3. Research Design......... 15
3.1 Research Questions......... 15
3.2 Research Subjects......... 15
3.3 Research Instruments .........16
3.3.1 Questionnaire .........16
3.3.2 Interview......... 17
3.3.3 English PRETCO-Level A Test Score......... 18
3.4 Research Procedures......... 18
3.5 Data Collection .........19
3.6 Data Analysis .........19
4. Results and Discussions......... 21
4.1 Results of English Learning Attitudes......... 21
4.2 Results of Attributions .........27
4.3 The Relationship between English Learning Attitude and Attribution......... 31
4.4 Interactions between English Learning Attitudes.........31
4.5 Analysis of Interviews......... 36
5. Findings and Implications......... 38
5.1 The Findings of the Study......... 38
5.2 The Implications for English Teaching......... 40
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research ......... 48
5.4 Summary ......... 50
5. Findings and Implications
5.1 The Findings of the Study
The main aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship among Englishlearning attitudes，attributions and English achievements. In this study，we have used severalinstruments, such as the questionnaire, interviews, data analysis and so on. The authorcombined these tools with research questions and made a careful research, the findings of thestudy are summarized as follows: The Non-English majors of higher vocational college students' English learning attitudesand their English achievements interrelated with each other, and if English learning attitude isgood，the learning effect will be more obvious. If the students are able to experience the joy oflearning in the learning process, and also produce a sense of accomplishment, the fun and thesense of accomplishment will maintain the right attitude in turn. In contrast, if the Englishlearning attitude is not good，its English learning outcome will not very good, too. We can seeit from the attitude which the subjects do this questionnaire.In this survey, there are two invalid questionnaires. When the two students did the survey,they chose the same option of all the questions. During the interviews, the low-scored groupstudents apparently unwilling to cooperate with the author and answer the questions inactively.These phenomena reflect that the mutual influence relationship between the English learningattitudes and English achievements.
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Conclusion
English academic achievement is generally low, it has been a common problem whichfaced by the higher vocational college students and teachers. Although it is possible toimprove the English learning situation of higher vocational college through variety of externalhelp, but we know that external cause can fully play the important role only through theinternal cause. The English learning attitude and attribution of higher vocational collegestudents are some important internal causes. It is not hard to see from many previousresearches, learning attitude and attribution are the important factors that affect Englishachievements of students. However, there are rare researches exploring how the two factorsinfluence to the English achievement. The related study of higher vocational college isespecially rare. Do the learning attitude and attribution play very important roles to Englishacademic achievement in higher vocational college? Is it possible to improve their Englishachievements by improving learning attitudes of non-English major students，and cultivatingtheir correct attribution methods? All of these questions are what I thought in the past fewyears' English teaching in higher vocational college. These questions also become theimportant content which this article wants to explore.
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Reference (omitted)