European Journal of Education Studies
ISSN: 2501 - 1111
ISSN-L: 2501 - 1111
Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu
10.5281/zenodo.192396
Volume 2│Issue 12│2016
ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH
LANGUAGE LEARNING: THE EFFECTS OF GENDER,
AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
Gülten Gençi
Inonu University School of Foreign Languages Malatya, Turkey
Abstract:
The main purpose of this study is to analyze Turkish tertiary level EFL learners
attributions to success and failure and the effects of gender, age, and perceived success
on their attributions. The results indicated that EFL learners respectively attributed
interest, ability, task difficulty, effort, luck and the influence of teacher and school as
influential factors of their success whereas they respectively rated effort, interest, the
effect of teacher and school, ability, task difficulty, and luck as influential factors of their
failure. Furthermore, they were more inclined to agree that internal reasons are
responsible for their success while blaming external reasons for their failure. In
addition, females seemed to attribute external factors more than their male counterparts
and unsuccessful learners attributed more importance to effort and internal dimension
than successful students. Finally, the study revealed that age was not an important
factor in EFL learners attribution to success and failure.
Key Words: attribution to success and failure, gender, perceived success
Introduction
Teaching language effectively has always been a major concern of language teachers
and scholars in the field of language studies. Hundreds of studies have been conducted
to contribute to the process of language learning. Learners causes of success and failure
are among them and psychological research about it goes as far as 1950s with the
studies of Fritz Heider
. “lthough the starting point was Heider s studies which
constituted the groundwork for all theories of attribution in the field of psychology,
Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved
Published by Open Access Publishing Group ©2015.
25
Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
many scholars such as Williams and Burden (1997), Jarvis, (2005), Weiner (1974, 1980,
1986), Graham, (1991) have also contributed a lot to the theory up to now.
Attribution Theory
“ttribution theorists assume that individuals seek to understand why events have occurred
(Schuster, Forsterlung, & Weiner, 1989, p. 192). In other words, attribution theory
(Weiner, 1992) deals with the reasons that individuals attribute to their perceived
successes and failures in situations where achievement is considered. As the pioneering
scholar in the attribution studies Heider, (1958) argues that in order to do so,
individuals imposes structure to social stimuli and to the environment, make inferences
from those structures and behave in accordance with them. He concludes that an
awareness of the causal structure of human behavior is necessary for prediction and
control of outcomes. Therefore, an attribution refers to
constructions imposed by
perceivers to account for the relation between an action and an outcome
Weiner,
, p.
.
Four principal causes influencing attributions for perceived success and failure in life
were determined as ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck (Weiner, 1980, 1986). In
addition, three dimensions for attributions were determined as locus of control,
stability, and controllability (Wiener, 1986). Therefore, attributers may perceive these
causes to be either internal or external and the reasons either change over time or
remain stable, and they can control them or not. The attribute dimensions of the above
four main causes have been generally analyzed as follows: while ability is an internal,
stable, and relatively uncontrollable factor, task difficulty is an external, stable, and
uncontrollable one. Likewise, effort is an internal, unstable, and controllable factor
while luck is an external, unstable, and relatively uncontrollable cause.
Later, psychologist Bernard Weiner developed his own version of attribution
theory in
s based on Heider s view of attribution and the theory of control and
redesigned it in 1980s, as a more comprehensive and systematic one (William and
Burden, 2000). Weiner developed the model and suggested that, on the whole, people
refer to six main sets of attributions for their perceived successes and failures and
subsequently added two more factors to the four previous ones as physical and mental
condition and others which refer to some effect from the elements, such as help from
family, feedbacks from other people.
And the six attributions can be classified into three dimensions through the
different properties of the attributions. So, locus of causality, means that people
consider the source of attributions as themselves (internal) or environmental (external)
factors. Ability, effort and the physical and mental condition attribution elements
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
considered as the internal factors, while others as the external factors. Stability refers to
the factors are fixed or not. Ability and task difficulty attributions are categorized as the
stable factors and others as the unstable ones. Controllability refers to whether the
factors can be controlled by the individuals or not. The effort attribution is related to the
dimension of controllable and all of the others are related to the dimension of
uncontrollable. Most of the time, people would tend to attribute their successes to the
internal, stable and controllable factors, whereas they would tend to attribute their
failures to the external, unstable and uncontrollable factors. This is thought to be as the
correct method of people s attribution preference
William and ”urden,
, p.
-
106). This seems to be related to the hedonic bias which is also known as self-serving
attributional bias in that individuals explain success in terms of internal causes (e.g.
ability, effort) and failure as resulting from external, situational factors (e.g. task
difficulty, luck) to protect their self-esteem (Weiner, 2000) and avoid depression
(Sweeney, Anderson & Bailey, 1986). However, it is reported to be more common in
Western cultures rather than Eastern cultures (Mezulis et al., 2004).
Attribution in Foreign Language Learning
Attribution theory has particular importance in language learning because of the
common failure students experience in learning a language (Dornyei, 2005) or failure in
achieving the desired level of proficiency. It definitely provides some clues about the
future behaviors of the learners by shedding light into the past behaviors of them. Thus,
understanding the possible causes of events can give some insights into understanding
learners success as well as failure. With respect to foreign language learning,
attribution theory explains how foreign language learners evaluate their success or
failure and consequently, how their perceptions affect their performance (Weiner, 2000).
Helping learners to be aware of their perceptions of attributions brings some
advantages to language learning and teaching. It can be assumed that language learners
who are aware of their attributions can understand the cognitive reasons behind their
achievement easily as suggested by Williams and Burden (1997).
Attribution Studies in EFL Context
In the field of foreign language learning, the significance of attribution theories has also
been well understood and revealed by most of the language researchers both in Turkey
and abroad such as Gardner, (1991); Oxford and Shearin, (1994); McQuillan, (2000);
Graham, (2004); Hsieh, (2004); Williams, et al., (2004); Lim, (2007); Gobel and Mori,
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
(2007), Hassaskhah, and Vahabi (2010), Pishghadam and Motakef (2011), Mohammadi
and Sharififar (2016), Satıcılar,
, Taşkıran, (2010), Şahinkarakaş
, 5zkardeş,
(2011), Semiz, 2011, Tekir, (2012), Erten and Burden, (2014), and Erten, (2015). Among
those studies, Gobel and Mori, (2007) determined that less successful learners attributed
their failure to a lack of ability and effort while more successful learners attributed their
success to teachers and the learning environment. In addition, results of Pishghadam
and Motakef s study
showed that university students from different majors
attributed their successes and failures to different factors. Moreover, Hassaskhah, and
Vahabi (2010) indicated that effort was the most cited reason for failure in language
studies. Lastly, the results of Mohammadi and Sharififar s
study indicated that
learners attributed their success and failure to both internal and external factors but
giving more priority to external factors. It was also revealed that there were significant
relationships between learner's gender, proficiency level and attributions.
Studies conducted by Taşkıran
5zkardeş
, Koçyiğit
, Semiz
, and
, were conducted with university students studying English as a foreign
language and yielded invaluable and different results. For instance, Taşkıran s
study revealed that the tertiary level students who perceived themselves as successful
made significantly more internal, controllable and relatively stable attributions.
Likewise, Koçyiğit
indicated that attributions to failure are more external,
externally more controllable but personally less controllable. According to the findings
of Semiz s
study, significant differences were found between successful and
unsuccessful students in terms of their attributions; successful students intended to
make more internal and personal attributions compared to unsuccessful students. In
addition, 5zkardeş
found that unsuccessful learners attributed their failure to an
internal, controllable cause lack of enough vocabulary’ and attributed their failure to
external, stable, and uncontrollable factors.
As a result, all of the studies mentioned so far seem to verify that attribution
theory is one of the most crucial research topics in the field of language learning and
teaching and it is worth investigating it from different perspectives. Yet, very few
studies have been carried out in the Turkish tertiary level EFL context. Considering that
EFL teaching in universities is unfortunately far from the desired proficiency level in
Turkey, it would be sensible to determine what learners attribute their success and
failure to in school settings.
Thus, the study sought the answers for the following research questions:
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
Research Questions
1. What reasons do the Turkish tertiary level EFL learners attribute to their success
and failure in their EFL learning process?
2. What is the impact of gender, age, and perceived success on the attribution
patterns of Turkish tertiary level EFL learners?
Method
Participants
First of all, participating in the study was completely based on voluntariness and the
questionnaire was administered only to the volunteer students of the school. The
participants (may also be referred to as learners
in this research comprised of
(58.4%) females and 121 (41.6%) males, totally 291 students of preparatory classes
studying English for one year in the School of Foreign Languages. They are all freshmen
aged from 18 to 30. According to the data gathered from the participants, 211 (72.5%) of
them have reported that they find themselves successful in their English studies
whereas 80 (27.5%) of them do not think that they are successful. Besides, 249 (85.6%) of
the participants stated that they like learning English while 42 (14,4%) of them do not
like studying English and they study it because they simply have to. Finally, 262 (90%)
of the participants pointed out that they themselves want to learn English whereas 26
(8.9%) of them claimed that they study English because it is compulsory for their
further education.
Instruments
The participants were asked to anonymously fill out a questionnaire involving two
parts which respectively investigated their background information and a scale
concerning questions attributions to their success and failure. The questionnaire which
aimed to investigate the participants attributions to success and failure was originally
developed by Höl (2016) and was reported to have a Cronbach alpha of 0.80. The
questionnaire itself contains 38 items, scored on a five point Likert scale ranging from
strongly agrees to strongly disagree. The questionnaire involved 13 items involving
attributions to success and 25 items involving the attributions to failure. The
questionnaire evaluated the students attributions in six factors as ability, effort,
interest, task difficulty, luck, and teacher/school influence and two dimensions as
internal and external. The Cronbach-alpha coefficient value for the overall reliability
analysis of the Attribution Questionnaire for this study was found as 0.89 which shows
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
a satisfying level of reliability beyond the minimum desirable level of reliability as
stated by Pallant (2005):
Data Analysis
The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics (percentage, mean, median, and
standard deviation), Independent Samples T tests and Pearson Correlation Analysis.
The level of significance was 0.05 for the analyses, which were conducted using SPSS.
Findings and Discussion
The findings of the research are presented in accordance with research questions by
comparing the existing literature.
A.
The reasons that the Turkish tertiary level EFL learners attribute to their
success and failure in their EFL learning process
Based on the result of descriptive statistics, present study indicated that participants
attributed various reasons to their success and failure about learning English as a
foreign language. The reasons of success and failure attributed to learning English can
be seen in Table 1 and Table 2 in descending order. Among six factors of the
questionnaire, interest is the strongest reason followed by ability, task difficulty, effort,
luck and the influence of teacher and school in success. The order of the attributions to
both success and failure is different. This can be interpreted as an inconsistency
between the students responses and reactions to success and failure in their foreign
language studies. That is, the choice of attributions clearly changes with regard to
success or failure.
Table 1: Factors Attributed to Success
Factors
N
MEAN
SD
Interest
291
3.57
1.01
Ability
291
3.39
0.93
Task Difficulty
291
3.37
0.99
Effort
291
3.29
1.11
Teacher/ School
291
3.13
0.85
Luck
291
2.90
1.26
The learners seem to emphasize the significance of interest for success. The next
frequently uttered factor for success is ability. It seems that students believe in the
strength of a special ability for language learning and the individuals having this ability
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
can be successful. The place of effort which is almost on top of the list of the attributions
to success is not so promising on behalf of the participants. As pointed out by Brophy,
(1998) and Keblawi, (2009) attributing failure to low ability might cause the learners to
lose their expectations for subsequent success and this situation will finally enable the
learners to think that they cannot control over the outcome and lacks in motivation. In
other words, this can lead to the tendency for helplessness and despair (Abramson, et
al., 1978). Task difficulty which is the third mostly attributed factor for success is one of
the external factors. Briefly, these three mostly attributed factors are clearly beyond the
control of individuals. This result indicates that students beliefs and ideas on their
ability and interest are of great importance in their language studies. The next factor
which is on the fourth rank is effort. This result reveals that students do not appreciate
adequately the effects of sufficient endeavor in foreign language studies. Even though
effort is among the factors which can be controlled by the learners, participants do not
attribute it to success as much as the uncontrollable ones such as ability, interest and
task difficulty. The least cited two factors are respectively the effects of teacher, school,
and luck which are among the external factors that cannot be controlled easily. The
effects of teacher or school or in other words, learning environment is not seen as an
important factor of success by the participants. It is in contrast with some other results
of the researchers mentioned in the literature such as Gobel and Mori, (2007) who
suggested that successful students mostly attribute to teachers for their success.
However, the psychological effect of luck on learners performance as debilitative or
facilitative should not be ignored. It might be thought that students perceiving
themselves as lucky or unlucky might have changing mood during their studies.
Table 2: Factors Attributed to Failure
Factors
N
MEAN
SD
Effort
291
3.36
0.81
Interest
291
3.34
0.75
Teacher/ School
291
3.24
0.72
Ability
291
3.23
0.69
Task Difficulty
291
3.21
0.72
Luck
291
3.05
1.07
When it comes to the attributions for failure, the study indicated that learners differed
considerably in terms of their reasons of failure. As can be seen in Table 3, contrary to
their attributions to success, majority of learners endorsed effort as their first reason of
failure which is also in line with the most studies conducted in the field (Graham, 1994
& Weiner, 1992). The next factor which was mostly endorsed by the EFL learners is
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
interest, followed by the effect of teacher and school, ability, task difficulty and finally,
luck. It seems that learners firstly attribute to a controllable factor such as effort for their
failure. However, the second attributed reason is interest which is not controlled by the
learners. The third is the effect of teacher and school which is an uncontrollable one.
The participants do not seem to believe strongly that ability and task difficulty is a
reason of failure in language studies. Previous literature suggests that when subjects
think that causes of failure are due to lack of ability or task difficulty, their expectations
for subsequent learning decreases, because subjects cannot control them (Weiner, 1986).
Thus, people may not make the effort to turn things around. Because, if one attributes
failure to lack of ability, may experience self-esteem which indirectly may decrease
expectancy of success. Fortunately, the participants of the present study do not attribute
to ability and task difficulty of failure in the first place and can be supposed to take
precautions for their failure. Thus, it seems that they are not supposed to have this
adverse effect excessively.
Another result shows that the least cited reasons for failure are respectively task
difficulty and luck as revealed in Table 3. Task difficulty is related to the real success of
the learners. It is evident that participants do not strongly believe that task difficulty is
an important reason in their failure. As indicated in previous literature this may be
interpreted as a fear of raising the expectations for the future. In other words, accepting
the difficulty of the task as the reason of failure in one case might promise to perform
better for the subsequent time (Woolfolk, 1998). Additionally it is evident that
participants put the effort which is the only controllable factor in the first place and
interest, the effect of teacher and school, ability, task difficulty and luck which are the
uncontrolled ones in the second place. This finding suggests that students primarily
regard controllable factors as responsible for their failure and regard the uncontrollable
ones as collateral factors. Thus, it is noteworthy that students may have a tendency to
cope with their failure to some extent.
Considering the dimensions of learners attributions to success and failure, it has
been clearly seen that students mostly attributed to internal reasons for their success
whereas they mostly seem to endorse external reasons for their failure (Table 2). That is,
participants of this study attributed the success to internal but failure to external factors.
It is evident that the origin of success belongs to the individuals while the origin of the
failure is an outside factor. It has been claimed by the previous researchers that learners
attributing their failure to external factors report anger, surprise, and hostility while
learners attributing their success to internal factors report feelings of pride, confidence,
and satisfaction (Weiner, Russell, & Lerman (1979). Likewise, it can obviously be
thought that participants of this research blame the factors that they cannot control and
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
express their hostility by attributing failure to external factors whereas having pride,
confidence and satisfaction in attributing their success to internal factors.
Table 2: Dimensions Attributed to Success and Failure
SUCCESS
DIMENSIONS
N
MEAN
FAILURE
SD
N
MEAN
SD
INTERNAL
291
3.41
0.87
291
3.20
0.61
EXTERNAL
291
3.28
0.82
291
3.30
0.64
This finding, also, typically indicates the existence of a hedonic bias, in other words,
self-serving attribution bias which suggests that success is often explained by internal
causes, whereas failure is related to external causes. Although such researchers as
Mezulis et.al., (2004), Gobel and Mori, (2007) indicated that hedonic bias is a dominant
cultural phenomena in western cultures, others such as Chandler and Spies, (1981),
Kashima and Triandis, (1986), and Parameswaran and Hom, (2000) found that the selfserving bias is universal, in that the bias seems to be present in many different cultures,
regardless of its being collectivist or individualist. In addition, some studies conducted
in Turkey by Can,
and Taşkıran,
, and 5zkardeş,
indicated the
existence of a hedonic bias in their studies. However, Weiner claims that attributing
failure to internal controllable causes lead learners to be more productive for their
future studies. But the effect of hedonic bias in controlling unsuccessful students
feelings of guilt and preventing helplessness and depression should not be
underestimated. Otherwise, learners could give up trying for future studies under the
pressure of failure.
B.
The impact of gender, age, and perceived success on the attribution patterns of
Turkish tertiary level EFL learners
In order to determine which factors and dimensions showed significant changes, the
differences in reported items about attributions to success and failure were analyzed
using independent samples t-test analysis (paired sample correlations). For these items
which showed a significant difference, the mean scores of the responses to the
questionnaire are reported in Table 3 and Table 4. The results showed that gender is not
an important factor in determining students reasons of success and failure. In other
words, Turkish tertiary level EFL learners did not differ at all in terms of gender in their
attributions to either success or failure with respect to the reasons involving ability,
effort, interest, task difficulty, luck and factors about teachers and schools (Table 3).
However, when the dimensions are taken into consideration, it has been found out that
attribution of failure to external factors differed significantly at the 0.05 level indicating
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
gender as a significant variable. As can be seen in Table 4, females attributed external
factors to their failure more than their male counterparts. Differently, internal
dimension is not a significant factor in either the attribution to success or failure.
Nevertheless, in the previous literature it is possible to see both contrasting and
consistent studies with the results of the present study. For instance, Peacock (2009)
reported significant differences between males and females in language learning
context whereas; researchers such as Chedzoy and Burden, (2009) and Pintrich and
Schunk (2002) found connections between attributions and gender in other fields of
study. Sweeney, Moreland and Gruber (1982) also highlighted that females attributed
their failures to external attributions, while males ascribed to internal attributions as in
the case of the present study. Moreover, Williams et al (2004) explored attributions of
both sexes, and put forward that girls attributed their failure to internal reasons while
males more than females ascribed their success to internal causes. Unlikely, some
studies revealed that gender does not seem to have any impact on students attribution
pattern (Hassaskhaha, and Vahabib, 2010; Semiz, 2011; Pishghadam and Motakef, 2012).
Table 3: EFL Learners attributions to success in terms of gender and academic achievement
Factors/ Dimensions
Descriptives
Gender
Female
Effort
P
0.33
0.01*
3.35±0.08
3.19±0.10
3.19±0.07
3.55±0.11
170
121
211
80
T
0.821
-1.40
P
0.41
0.16
N
3.61±0.08
3.51±0.08
3.51±1.07
3.70±0.10
170
121
211
80
T
0.781
-1.35
P
0.43
0.17
M±SE
N
3.16±0.06
3.08±0.07
3.09±0.05
3.24±0.90
170
121
211
80
T
0.96
-1.57
P
0.33
0.11
M±SE
N
Task Difficulty
Unsuccessful
-2.46
M±SE
Ability
Successful
0.96
N
Teacher/ School
Male
T
M±SE
Interest
Academic Achievement
3.44±0.07
3.33±0.08
3.34±0.65
3.53±0.09
170
121
211
80
T
1.171
-1.32
P
0.24
0.18
M±SE
N
3.43±0.07
3.29±0.08
3.32±0.99
3.50±1.00
170
121
211
80
T
European Journal of Education Studies - Volume 2 │ Issue 12 │ 2016
0.733
-1.16
34
Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
P
M±SE
Luck
N
Internal
0.10
2.95±0.10
2.84±0.10
2.83±0.08
3.10±0.13
170
121
211
80
T
1.159
-2.08
P
0.24
0.03*
M±SE
N
External
0.46
3.46±0.06
3.34±0.07
3.35±0.06
3.58±0.09
170
121
211
80
T
1.314
-1.51
P
0.19
0.13
M±SE
N
3.34±0.06
3.21±0.06
3.24±0.05
3.40±0.09
170
121
211
80
In regard to academic achievement and attributions to success and failure, various
results have been seen. Firstly, it is clear that academic success is a significant variable
in determining the learners attributions to success in the reasons involving only effort
and internal dimension. Interestingly, students reporting themselves as unsuccessful
seem to attribute success to effort and internal reasons in attributing success. Secondly,
when it comes to attributions to failure; task difficulty, luck, and external dimension are
seen to be significant factors.
As can be seen in Table 4, students reporting themselves as unsuccessful
language learners attribute their failure more to task difficulty, luck and external
factors. This finding seems to be quite consistent with the other findings of the study.
As mentioned above the students, participated in the study, still reflect the effect of the
hedonic bias. Regarding the results, on one hand, it can be thought that students mostly
believe that they are successful since they put effort in their studies and internal factors
such as ability and effort contribute to their English language studies. On the other
hand, they mostly believe that failure stems from the factors that cannot be controlled
by the students themselves such as task difficulty, luck, and external reasons. Similarly,
in the previous literature, lots of studies (Stevenson & Lee, 1990; Christenson, et.al,
1992; O'sallivan & Howe, 1996) reported that learners who are successful at language
learning attribute their success to internal factors such as ability and effort while
unsuccessful language learners attribute their failure to external factors such as luck
and task difficulty. Additionally, a recent study into attributions of English language
learners in Iran (Pishghadam & Zabihi, 2011) determined significant positive
relationship between attribution of effort and foreign language achievement.
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
Table 4: EFL Learners attributions to failure in terms of gender and academic achievement
Factors / Dimensions
Descriptives
Gender
Female
Effort
P
0.27
0.28
3.44±0.66
168
119
207
80
P
0.93
0.65
3.33±0.05
3.34±0.06
3.33±0.05
3.37±0.76
170
121
211
80
T
1.514
-1.35
P
0.13
0.17
3.29±0.05
3.16±0.06
3.20±0.05
3.33±0.06
170
121
211
80
T
0.409
-1.57
P
0.68
0.11
M±SE
N
3.24±0.04
3.21±0.06
3.20±0.04
3.29±0.07
170
120
210
80
T
1.494
-1.75
P
0.13
0.08*
M±SE
N
3.27±0.05
3.14±0.07
3.17±0.05
3.33±0.07
170
121
211
80
T
0.449
-1.77
P
0.65
0.07*
M±SE
N
3.08±0.07
3.02±0.10
2.99±0.07
3.24±0.11
170
120
211
79
T
0.647
-0.96
P
0.51
0.33
M±SE
N
External
3.32±0.06
-0.45
N
Internal
3.29±0.07
-0.88
M±SE
Luck
3.40±0.06
T
N
Task Difficulty
Unsuccessful
-1.07
M±SE
Ability
Successful
1.086
N
Teacher/ School
Male
T
M±SE
Interest
Academic Achievement
3.27±0.04
3.22±0.67
3.22±0.04
3.30±0.06
168
119
207
80
T
1.931
-2.12
P
0.05*
0.03*
M±SE
N
3.31±0.04
3.16±0.06
3.20±0.04
3.38±0.06
170
120
211
79
Furthermore, this finding does not seem to be promising for the students with regard to
their future performance. As long as students believe that, the reasons of their failure
are beyond their control they may not put much effort to change the situation. The
results of a study conducted by Pishghadam and Zabihi (2011) indicated a significant
positive relationship between attribution of effort and foreign language achievement. It
also supports the idea that if language learners believe in the positive effect of effort and
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
their ability to control success and failure in their studies, they can be expected to strive
to succeed. In the same way, Dörnyei (2001) also emphasized the effect of attribution in
learners success and failure.
Regarding the effects of age on six factors and two dimensions of attributions to
success and failure, Spearman correlations were conducted. After the analysis, it was
seen that the correlation between them was not strong or significant, suggesting that no
relationship exists between age and six factors and two dimensions of attributions. The
results are summarized in Table 5.
Table 5: The Spearman Correlation between age and attributions to success and failure
Success
Factors/Dimensions
Effort
r
Failure
p
r
p
0.01
0.84
-0.05
0.37
-0.18
0.76
-0.02
0.72
Teacher/School
0.10
0.07
-0.02
0.65
Ability
Interest
0.01
0.84
0.06
0.28
Task Difficulty
-0.03
0.51
0.03
0.50
Luck
-0.13
0.02
-0.03
0.59
Internal
0.00
0.95
0.00
0.91
External
0.00
0.87
-0.01
0.82
As a matter of fact, age in attribution studies attribution have had little attention in EFL
context and research involving age as a variable is quite limited. In addition, the result
related to the effect of age in the present study mainly contradicts with the results of
some limited studies reported in the previous literature. Williams et,al. (2004) and
Hassaskhah and Vahabi (2010) were the researchers who investigated the effect of age
on attribution to success and failure and suggested that age also has a significant impact
on learners attribution.
Conclusion and Recommendation
First of all, the study indicated that EFL learners attributed different factors to their
success and failure. In other words, it was seen that EFL learners respectively attributed
interest, ability, task difficulty, effort, luck and the influence of teacher and school as
influential factors of their success whereas they respectively rated effort, interest, the
effect of teacher and school, ability, task difficulty, and luck as influential factors of their
failure. Furthermore, they were more inclined to agree that internal reasons are
responsible for their success while blaming external reasons for their failure. The result
evidently indicated the existence of hedonic bias in Turkish EFL context as another
European Journal of Education Studies - Volume 2 │ Issue 12 │ 2016
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
striking conclusion of the study. Within the present study, gender was found to be as a
significant factor just in students attribution to failure but not success. Females seem to
attribute external factors more than their male counterparts. Regarding the perceived
success of the EFL learners, unsuccessful learners seem to attribute more importance to
effort and internal dimension than successful students in terms of their success.
Furthermore, in terms of failure, students perceiving themselves as unsuccessful were
seen to attribute failure more to task difficulty, luck and external factors. Finally, the
study revealed that age was not an important factor in EFL learners attribution to
success and failure.
Considering the fact that a better understanding of the nature and impact of
attribution to success and failure may enhance students motivation and encourage
them to be aware of their capability in controlling their performance in foreign
language studies, it is strongly recommended to inform students about their attribution
to success and failure. Consequently, to improve academic performance and motivation
of EFL students, their awareness levels of attribution could be raised by giving them
attribution training in the schools of foreign languages. In addition, foreign language
teachers as well as students could be thought to be enlightened about the vital
importance of attribution in foreign language studies. As for another interesting
conclusion of the study, namely, the existence of hedonic bias in the Turkish EFL
context, it is suggested that further studies could be conducted in different cultural
contexts to either confirm or reject that it is unique in western societies as reported in
previous literature (Mezulis et.al., 2004; Gobel & Mori, 2007).
In conclusion, the findings of this study enhanced our understanding of the
Turkish EFL learners attribution to success and failure about foreign language learning.
Yet, more research is clearly needed in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the
complexity of learners attribution to success and failure. It should be noted that, there
were some limitations to this study. The population of this study is limited to some EFL
learners in a state University in Turkey. So the results of the study cannot be
generalized directly to all EFL learners all over Turkey. The results can only provide us
with insights and a general opinion from this specific sample. In addition, different
studies with more participants using different research methods such as quasi analysis
and qualitative research methods may provide deeper insight and bring brighter results
in various contexts and different educational institutions.
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Gülten Genç ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
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THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS
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