Attribution and learning English as

a foreign language
Matthew Peacock

Learner attributions, perceived causes of success and failure, have received little
attention in EFL research. Attributions are categorized as either internal (for
example effort) or external (for example luck) and may affect how students learn
about and impose order on their world. We investigated the attributions of 505
university students in Hong Kong and the connections between attribution and

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proficiency, gender, and academic discipline. Student interviews identified 26
common attributions, which were listed in a questionnaire: students were asked to
what they attributed E F L success or failure. Follow-up interviews investigated the
origins of attributions. Also, 40 EFL teachers were asked to what they attributed
student success and failure. Many statistically significant differences were found
between attribution and E F L proficiency, gender, and academic discipline and
between student and teacher opinions. We conclude that attribution affects
proficiency, effort, and persistence. Finally, suggestions are made for learner
training and teacher action in the EFL classroom.

Introduction Attributions, which are perceived reasons for success and failure resulting
from self-questioning such as ‘Why did I get a poor grade?’, have received
surprisingly little attention in E F L research. Psychologists suggest that
attribution is how students learn about themselves and impose order on
uncertain environments (Graham 1994: 32).
We investigated Hong Kong university student attributions and the links
between attribution and gender, academic discipline, and E F L proficiency.
We also asked EF L teachers to what they attributed student success and
failure and compared student and teacher opinions. Finally, we asked
students about the origins of their attributions.

Previous research in The topic of attribution matured with Weiner’s influential 1992 book.
psychology Weiner established that attributions vary in three ways:
1 whether they are internal (for example effort) or external (for example
luck)
2 whether they are stable (whether the attribute is open to change: effort
can be increased, while innate ability cannot)
3 whether they can be controlled (for example effort is controllable,
whereas luck is not).

184 E LT Journal Volume 64/2 April 2010; doi:10.1093/elt/ccp031

ª The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Advance Access publication May 7, 2009
 He says the four main attributions are ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck
and hypothesizes that attribution affects effort and persistence because we
work harder when we believe success comes as a result of effort. He adds
that attributing results to internal and controllable factors gives people
feelings of control and stimulates them to try hard and succeed, while with
external and uncontrollable attributions people may be discouraged and not
try hard, believing this will not lead to success. Others have added to
Weiner’s theories: Borich (1995: 228) says people inevitably try to explain
success and failure, and Bruning, Schraw, Norby, and Ronning (2004: 123)
suggest that attribution varies considerably among students.

Previous research in Ushioda (2001) asked 14 Irish university students why they succeeded in L2
EFL/L2 French: they mentioned ability, effort, and love of French. This study is
important as it investigated adult L2 attributions. Two other studies
investigated E F L/L2 attributions, though these are less important for our
research as the students were children. Williams and Burden (1999) asked
36 British schoolchildren learning French why they did and did not do well.
The reasons they gave for doing well were effort, ability, and teachers, and
the reasons for failure were distractions, poor teaching, and lack of revision

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and ability. Williams, Burden, and Al-Baharna (2001) asked 25 Bahraini E F L
schoolchildren and 29 teachers why students succeeded or failed in English.
Students attributed success to practice plus teacher and family support,
while teachers attributed success to adequate teaching materials and
methods, positive attitudes, and effort. Students attributed failure to poor
teaching and lack of family and teacher support, whereas teachers attributed
it to inadequate materials.
Others speculate about E F L attribution. Dörnyei (2001a: 57, 134) suggests
that attribution affects proficiency. He also theorizes that failure attributed
to uncontrollable factors hinders achievement and that this important area
has further scope for research. Williams and Burden call for more research
into E F L attribution and speculate that gender may be an important factor,
as do Holschuh, Nist, and Olejnik (2001: 157). (There appear to be no
previous findings on gender.) Williams et al. hypothesize that attribution
plays a significant role in E F L.

EFL attribution as EFL attributions, then, are reasons or beliefs people hold about why they
a concept and succeed or fail in E F L. Many authors say they are part of a framework of
rationale for research interrelationships, as we have seen. We suggest that teachers are often
unaware of student attributions, but need to increase their awareness. If,
for example, students attribute E F L success or failure to external or
uncontrollable rather than internal or controllable factors, and this affects
learning, teachers should know about it because they may be able to change
unhelpful attributions. Also, little seems to be known about the origin of
attributions. Graham (1994: 33) says research is needed here and we agree
because this may help teachers better understand E F L students and
learning and intervene to avoid undesirable attributions.
We also propose that teacher attributions are important because they may
affect teacher behaviour. Tollefson and Chen (1988: 264) theorize that when
teachers attribute student failure to a low level of effort, they might withhold
help from students, reinforcing student beliefs and behaviour.

Attribution and learning English as a foreign language 185

 We suggest that knowledge of attribution is valuable for EFL teachers and
students and has implications for learner and teacher awareness and
training. Previous research has not investigated the vital relationship
between attribution and proficiency, and this should be verified because
it may be possible to change undesirable attributions. Research into
gender and academic discipline links is also important because teachers
have to know about these varying attributions in order to deal with them. We
suggest that the topic remains under-researched and that further
investigation would make a useful contribution to our understanding
of E F L.
Research method Participants were 505 undergraduates (98 per cent Cantonese; 60 per cent
Subjects and school studying sciences/40 per cent humanities; 56 per cent male/44 per cent
female) studying E F L and 40 EFL teachers at the City University of Hong
Kong.

Research aims 1 To investigate student attributions towards learning E F L and test four
hypotheses taken from literature:
H1 Student attributions differ from teacher attributions

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H2 Attribution differs by gender
H3 Attribution differs by academic discipline
H4 There is a relationship between attribution and EFL proficiency.
2 To investigate the origin of student attributions.
3 To make recommendations for eliminating undesirable attributions.

Data collection and First, we interviewed 60 students, mixed by gender and academic
analysis discipline, and asked them to what they attribute E F L success and failure.
Students gave 15 reasons for success and 11 for failure. We constructed
a questionnaire with these 26 attributions (see Appendix) using
a five-point scale: ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘neither agree nor
disagree’, ‘disagree’, and ‘strongly disagree’. The order of items was
randomized.
Second, we collected questionnaires from 505 students in class. Students
wrote their number on their questionnaire so we could check the
connections between attribution and proficiency. Standard Year 1 test
results (listening comprehension, writing, reading, and speaking, 25 per
cent each) were used for proficiency data.
Next, we modified the questionnaire to collect E F L teacher opinions. The
questionnaire listed the same items and asked to what teachers attribute
student success and failure. We then collected questionnaires from
40 university EFL teachers.
Finally, we interviewed a different group of 60 students about the origin of
their attributions. Students were mixed by gender and academic discipline.
The meaning of ‘attribution’ was carefully explained.
Data analysis: percentages of agreement/disagreement were calculated
for questionnaire items and collapsed into three categories for clarity, i.e.
combining strongly agree/agree and disagree/strongly disagree. We
checked the connections between attribution and gender, academic

186 Matthew Peacock

 discipline, and proficiency using the Statistical Package for the Social
Sciences (SPSS). This software tests the difference between scores from two
groups (for example male/female proficiency) to see whether the difference
is statistically significant or not, i.e. whether there is a likelihood of 95 per
cent or higher that it did not happen by chance. The level of reliability of the
student questionnaire was calculated using SPSS at a high 0.76 and the
teacher questionnaire at 0.85. Student interview data were searched for
common origins of attributions and these were categorized.

Results The results are presented here and discussed in the following section.
It should be noted that all four hypotheses were supported.

H1 Students possessed a variety of attributions towards learning EFL

First, we will show students’ and teachers’ five most common attributions
for success, in ranked order:
Students
1 My teacher was a good teacher.
2 Outside class, I looked up words I did not know in a dictionary/studied

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vocabulary.
3 I paid attention in class.
4 I read a lot (English newspapers/books) outside class.
5 I watched English television/listened to English songs outside class.
Teachers
1 They loved/were interested in English.
2 They revised a lot for tests/studied hard in class.
3 They paid attention in class.
4 They read a lot (English newspapers/books) outside class.
5 Their teacher praised/encouraged them.
Most of these attributions are internal to subject, unstable (i.e. open to
change), and controllable (i.e. under subjects’ control). Two items are
common to both students and teachers: (3) and (4).
Second, we found 15 statistically significant differences between teacher and
student opinions about student attribution. Teachers strongly attributed
student success to effort, while students did not. These efforts were outside
class: reading a lot, focusing on English, watching television and listening to
songs, and revising hard for tests; and inside: paying attention, competing
hard with classmates, themselves, and previous results, and working hard
in class. Teachers strongly attributed failure to anxiety plus a lack of
confidence, while students did not. Teachers attributed both success and
failure to student love/enjoyment of/interest in English, while students did
not. Finally, students were significantly more likely to attribute both success
and failure to luck than were teachers. Most of these attributions are
internal, unstable, and controllable.

H2 Attribution differed significantly by gender

There were seven statistically significant differences. Females were
significantly more likely to attribute success to the following factors, which
are ranked, with the largest difference first:

Attribution and learning English as a foreign language 187

 1 My teacher praised/encouraged me.
2 I paid attention in class.
3 I loved/was interested in English.
4 I competed with myself/my previous results.
5 I revised a lot for tests/studied hard in class.
6 I competed hard with my classmates.
7 Outside class, I looked up words I did not know in a dictionary/studied
vocabulary.
Most of these attributions are internal, unstable, and controllable. We can
see that female students were significantly more likely to attribute success to
their own efforts than were male students.

H3 Attribution differed significantly by academic discipline

We found five six statistically significant differences, which follow below.
Science students attributed success to two factors:
1 Luck: ‘I was lucky’/‘I was unlucky’.
2 The tests were easy.

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Humanities students attributed success to three factors. These are, in
ranked order:
1 I loved/was interested in English.
2 My teacher praised/encouraged me.
3 I focused on English outside school.
We can see that science students attributed success to good luck and to easy
tests and failure to bad luck. All three factors are external and
uncontrollable. Humanities students, on the other hand, tended to attribute
success to love of English, teacher praise and encouragement, and their own
efforts.

H4 A statistically significant connection between six attributions and E F L

proficiency
More proficient students attributed success to these four factors:
1 I paid attention in class.
2 I loved/was interested in English.
3 I competed with myself/my previous results.
4 I revised a lot for tests/studied hard in class.
Less proficient students attributed success to easy tests, ‘The tests were
easy’, and failure to a lack of enjoyment, ‘I did not enjoy English’. So we can
see that while more proficient students attributed success primarily to their
own efforts, this was not the case with less proficient students, who
attributed both success and failure to other factors.

Student interviews These interviews on the origin of attributions were quite successful and
useful information was obtained. Three main categories emerged, and the
following quotations represent these.
The most common origin was personal experience. Many students told of
failing, for example one student said test items he revised did not appear and
now he believes ‘my failure in test depends on luck’. Another student failed

188 Matthew Peacock

 a test and concluded, ‘I’m not talented in language . . . [now] I don’t put
much effort in learning English’. Other typical comments were ‘The result
will not reflect the real situation . . . or what kind of effort you had paid’, ‘I
had an unhappy experience during my Form two English examination’, and
‘My memory is not good . . . if I put effort in learning English, I won’t have
much improvement’. Others learnt from better experiences and said they
did well after that, for example ‘I feel good when I can use English to chat
with other people’ and ‘Learning English just makes me feel good and
happy’, while others said they learnt that success came from having good
teachers, for example ‘The teacher creates a feeling that learning English is
fun’ and ‘Assistance from teacher . . . [led to] high marks’.
The second most common origin was being told something positive, for
example ‘Influence of the family . . . family can positively influence their
children to learn English, help the children . . . acquire successful English’,
‘Teachers’ encouragement . . . makes me feel that I can be successful’, and
‘My mother . . . has lots of hope on me. I don’t want to make her sad’.
The third most common origin was observation (i.e. causes of success/
failure that they observed in others), for example ‘I saw this guy carrying the

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dictionary all the time . . . that’s why he improved quickly’ and ‘When most
of my friends were hard working, I would work hard too. I worked hard so
that I could be part of them’.

Discussion and Our findings differed from previous E F L research, which is not surprising
conclusions given the different contexts. Our teacher and student opinions differed
significantly: teachers attributed student success to effort, while students
attributed success and failure to luck. We suggest that this means that
students perceive effort to be ineffective and therefore often attribute
success and failure to other factors such as intelligence, aptitude, memory,
and luck. Another explanation is that students experience a lack of control
over their E F L learning and school life. Teachers attributed failure to anxiety
plus a lack of confidence, and success/failure to love/enjoyment of/interest
in English; students did not. It is more difficult to see why this occurs but it
may be because students do not see any link between success/failure and
interest levels in a subject; some think English is not interesting (and
therefore useless) and do not ‘waste’ time making much effort with its study.
It is not easy to explain our academic discipline differences of science
students attributing success to good luck and easy tests and failure to bad
luck. It is striking that all three factors are external and uncontrollable and
we propose that this is an important feature of these results. We suggest that
this may be due to science students being more likely to see both success and
failure as outside their control and that this may originate from previous
EFL experiences. Our student interview data provide support for the latter
notion.
We will consider the meaning of the number of significant connections we
found between attribution and proficiency. It is noteworthy that more
proficient students attributed success to their (controllable) efforts, and less
proficient students attributed both success and failure to factors outside
their control. This finding provides support for Dörnyei’s conjecture that
failure attributed to uncontrollable factors hinders achievement. Also,

Attribution and learning English as a foreign language 189

 Weiner says attributing results to controllable factors gives people a feeling
of control and stimulates them to try hard and succeed, while attributing
them to uncontrollable factors discourages them with the result that they
make less effort the next time (as this will not lead to success). This may
explain these results: we suggest that certain attributions facilitate better
EFL learning. The direction of cause and effect seems to be that attribution
leads to more proficient students working harder and gaining better
proficiency. In any case, these findings provide support for the proposal that
attribution affects effort and persistence, and this is backed up by student
interview data, which indicate that students who attribute success and
failure to factors such as intelligence, aptitude, memory, and luck tend to
become discouraged and reduce their efforts in learning English. Another
way of looking at the proficiency results is to note that less proficient
students’ attributions differ more from teacher attributions: these students
have different ideas from the more proficient students about the reasons for
success and failure. In any case, we want to argue that our proficiency
findings are important for E F L teachers because any factors known to affect
proficiency must be of interest to them.

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Our interviews provided useful data on the origin of attributions, and these
data indicate that attributions form relatively early on. Also, these student
experiences seem to have lasting effects: the link between past and
present—between these students’ past experiences and their current
attitudes and actions—can be clearly seen in their comments.

Implications for It is possible that in many E F L classrooms around the world the proportion
teaching E FL of students with undesirable attributions is higher than teachers would
wish. Some students may not see the point of working hard and therefore
make less effort than is desirable. We suggest that once attributions are
identified they can be modified. And beyond this, the modifications may
affect action: Weiner (1992: 264) described his theory of attributional
change—changes in attribution produce changes in behaviour—and other
writers also make suggestions. Borich (1995: 233) notes that teacher
behaviour conveys attributional information to students and that therefore
teachers should monitor the attributional messages they send. Dörnyei
(2001b: 120–1) proposes encouraging students’ effort attributions and
playing down ability attributions, adding that everyone has an equal chance
with the former but not the latter. He suggests giving effort feedback and
modelling the connection between effort and outcomes. Bruning et al.
(2004: 125) suggest discussing the effects of different attributions with
students, pointing out that success and failure have alternative causes, and
helping them focus on controllable attributions.
Our results indicate that common origins of attributions are personal
experiences, family influence, and observation, none of which teachers can
prevent. Attributions may form early on and input on attribution may be
a useful part of the transition from primary to secondary to tertiary
education. Our findings lead us to suggest that it may be advantageous to
promote certain attributions among students as this may lead to improved
beliefs, effort, and proficiency. This has implications for learner training,
teacher understanding, teacher action, and teacher training.

190 Matthew Peacock

Practical suggestions Below we make suggestions for EFL teachers regarding what they can do in
for teachers their classrooms. The first eight refer to understanding attribution and the
following nine to changing student attributions.
Teachers should be aware that:
1 student attribution is common and that it may affect effort, proficiency,
and attitudes to English
2 student attributions for success and failure might be different from their
opinions
3 students may overestimate the effects of luck and test difficulty on their
successes and failures and underestimate the effect of effort
4 students’ attributions might differ by gender and by academic discipline
5 their behaviour conveys attributional information to students, and they
should monitor the attributional messages they send. For example, are
they emphasizing the role of effort in success?
6 student attributions may form early and be long lasting
7 the origins of student attribution may be personal experiences such as
failing, someone telling them something, and observations. Students
might not realize that these influences can be overcome

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8 it is necessary to ask what attributions they think their students have. Do
they have helpful or unhelpful attributions? If the latter, do the students
know they are unhelpful?
Possible ways of changing attributions:
1 Talk openly to your students about the effects of different attributions.
Point out that success and failure have alternative causes and help them
focus on controllable attributions. For example, after they succeed, ask
them ‘Why do you think you did well?’ After failures, ask ‘Why do you
think you did badly?’ Do not accept ability attributions. Failure can be
devastating for students, and the effects can be long lasting. After
a failure, tell them they can do better next time, for example through
more effort.
2 When you talk to students, always stress and model the important
connection between effort and learning E F L. Students seem much less
aware than teachers of this connection. Give specific examples of
student efforts which are connected with proficiency, for example
paying attention in class, competing with themselves/their previous
results, revising hard for tests, and working hard in class (illustrate these
with examples from your class or school). Emphasizing this may be of
greater relevance to male students whereas focusing on English outside
school may be more necessary for science students.
3 When you talk to students, downplay the role of intelligence, aptitude,
memory, and luck in learning E F L.
4 When you talk to students, stress internal, unstable, and controllable
attributions. Students have more control over these.
5 Tell students they have some influence over their successful learning of
E F L. This can help them realize they can achieve more control of their
environment and their life in school and stimulate them to try hard and
succeed.
6 Try to promote student confidence and love and enjoyment of English.
7 Help students find their strengths and succeed at something.

Attribution and learning English as a foreign language 191

 8 Give students individual support and encouragement and a sense of
achievement.
9 Help students in difficulty and encourage them to express their feelings.
Our results also have implications for pre- and in-service teacher training. It
is important to promote teacher awareness of the existence and causes of
attribution and inform them that it is possible to promote helpful
attributions. Trainee teachers also need to be made aware of the root causes
of E F L attributions, for example personal experiences such as failing,
someone telling them something negative (or positive), or their own
observations, and that these experiences seem to have powerful and long-
lasting effects.

Limitations of this While this research is limited to our context, it could provide insights into
research and attribution in other contexts. Also, it should be noted that attributions are
suggestions for self-report data and not directly observable. Our questionnaires were not
further research completed anonymously, perhaps affecting student answers. Regarding the
attribution/E F L proficiency connection, we assumed that the direction of
cause and effect was the former affecting the latter. Finally, we believe that
more in-depth student interviews would improve this research. However,

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we found our questionnaire to be useful and our interviews delivered
valuable information. Questions for further research are: How does
attribution affect E F L classroom behaviour and attitudes? What attributions
are prevalent elsewhere?
We have extended previous research and found statistically significant
relationships between attribution and E F L proficiency, gender, and
academic discipline and connections with effort and persistence, and thus
found evidence that E F L attributions are indeed part of a framework of
relationships with some important factors in E F L. We investigated student
and teacher attributions and their origins and made suggestions for
intervention, improving learner awareness, and teacher training. We will
close with the suggestion that teachers and students should further examine
attribution.
Final revised version received January 2009

References Graham, S. 1994. ‘Classroom motivation from an

Borich, G. D. 1995. Educational Psychology: A
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Bruning, R. H., G. J. Schraw, M. M. Norby, and R. R.
Ronning. 2004. Cognitive Psychology and Instruction
(Fourth edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Prentice Hall.
Dörnyei, Z. 2001a. Teaching and Researching
Motivation. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Dörnyei, Z. 2001b. Motivational Strategies in the
Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Dörnyei, Z. and R. Schmidt (eds.). 2001. Motivation
and Second Language Acquisition. Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawaii Press.
attributional perspective’ in H. F. O’Neil and
M. Drillings (eds.). Motivation: Theory and Research.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Holschuh, J. P., S. L. Nist, and S. Olejnik. 2001.
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and learning strategy use on perceptions of future
goals and emotional responses’. Reading Psychology
22: 153–73.
Tollefson, N. and J. S. Chen. 1988. ‘Consequences of
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192 Matthew Peacock

Weiner, B. 1992. Human Motivation: Metaphors,
Theories, and Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Williams, M. and R. Burden. 1999. ‘Students’
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learners’. Modern Language Journal 83/2: 193–201.
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The author
Matthew Peacock teaches in the Department of
English at the City University of Hong Kong. His
current interests include E F L theory and
methodology, L2 teacher education, E S P (English for
specific purposes), and attribution.
Email: enmatt@cityu.edu.hk

Appendix
Attribution
questionnaire items I did well in English because
I read a lot (English newspapers/books) outside class
I was lucky
The tests were easy
I focused on English outside school
I paid attention in class
I watched English TV/listened to English songs outside class

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I asked my teacher for help sometimes
I loved/was interested in English
I competed hard with my classmates
Outside class, I looked up words I did not know in a dictionary/studied
vocabulary
I was confident during tests
I competed with myself/my previous results
My teacher praised/encouraged me
I revised a lot for tests/studied hard in class
My teacher was a good teacher
I did badly in English because
I was unlucky
I did not enjoy English
The teacher was biased against me
I did not read the test questions carefully
I did not study hard
I had poor time management
I was nervous/anxious during tests
My teacher was not a good teacher
I was careless during tests
I lacked confidence in English
The tests were difficult/too difficult

Attribution and learning English as a foreign language 193