On the other side, in the twenty first century, English has become an international language serving as a lingua franca in a globalized world (Widdowson 1993; Seidlhofer 2005; Jenkins 2007)。 Owning to increasingly economic, scientific, political and cultural interaction with English speaking countries, there are more emphasis upon English learning in modern Chinese society。 Not only for education, but also for the future of inpidual, the society and even the whole nation , English plays a consequential role in everyone’s daily life。 Only when the teenagers become stronger can the country become stronger。 In a word, for high school students who want to get better education or brighter future, English performance is so apparently necessary that it can’t be neglected。 And it is the specific knowledge, thinking process, attitudes, and perceptual and physical skills that contribute to performance (Richards, 2001)。 Since so many elements influence performance that how to improve and evaluate students’ English academic performance becomes one of the major problems both for senior high school teachers and students。
Some researches have proved a theory that the effects of learning goals on learning strategies use and academic performance are beneficial(Ames 1992; Ames＆Archer 1988; Dweck＆Leggett 1988; Locke & Latham, 1990)。 And several studies have shown learning goals to be positively related to academic performance (Meece & Holt, 1993; Greene & Miller, 1996; Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990)。 A goal reflects one's purpose and refers to quantity, quality, or rate of performance (Locke & Latham, 1990)。 Analyzing the correlation between learning goal and academic performance is worthy。
In addition, research shows that setting goals to achieving goals increases motivation and performance (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Latham & Locke, 2002)。 Setting goals contributes to students making connection between their inpidual choices and the end results。 And the concept of goal setting has been concerned particularly essential for Second Language Acquisition (SLA) for scholars in education and language learning。 But recently, not so many students have clear learning goals and fluent English listening, speaking, reading, and writing abilities in senior high school。
During my internship in Huzhou High School, I interviewed some students and noticed that their perception of English varied form person to person。 Some students learned with high enthusiasm, self-control and distinct goals in English class and always set specific learning goals on their own, while others didn’t take English into consideration or were easily to be distracted。 These students lack motivation, enthusiasm, practice and good attitudes towards the English language that greatly affect their English performance。 Most students have performed poorly because of these inner feelings (Srichanyachon, 2010)。 A published study that has been found was an intervention study that raised seventh graders’ performance while preventing declines, in their intrinsic motivation, learning goals orientation, and behavioral engagement compared with the control group (Grolnick, Farkas, Sohmer, Michaels, & Valsiner, 2007)。 Since students’ learning goals orientation can be intervened, how to help students create or promote their motivation in learning and what kind of learning strategies should be developed to assist are two urgent issues。
What’s more, because minimal grade goals substantially predict actual grades (Locke & Bryan, 1968; Uhlinger & Stephens, 1960), it is useful to ask students for their minimal grade goals to prognosticate their possibly future academic performance。 Although the English test grade can not totally stand for students’ real competence, it is still a quite typical representative for their performance。 Teachers and researchers can evaluate students’ improvement of academic performance through their English test grades and in order to analyze more specifically by using the concrete score as a measure of progress。 目标设定策略对高中生英语学业成绩的影响(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_154042.html