A Qualitative Analysis on the Occurrence of Learned Helplessness among EFL Students

Abstract

This study seeks to provide some comprehensive information on EFL students' learned helplessness when learning English, by exploring the causal relationship between three variables: failure to learn English, personality traits and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation. Eighteen students and two English teachers participated in this study with a gatekeeper's consent. This was done mainly through focus group interviews. The data was elicited from the NEO-FI Personality Trait Inventory with a cross analysis done on the in-depth interviews. The findings indicate that students with different personality traits do regard their failure to learn English in different ways. This in turn, leads to various influences that decrease their intrinsic motivation. The intrinsic motivation for all of the participants is inevitably affected by failure, but learners with a neuroticism trait are the most sensitive to failure. Therefore, these are the students who are most susceptible to experiencing learned helplessness when learning English, while students with traits of openness, extraversion and agreeableness can reactivate their extrinsic motivation when appealed to by external incentives. However, this study also discovered that there was a mismatch between a teacher's judgment on student amotivation and the student's self-assessment of his/her motivation to learn English.

Need satisfaction, motivation, and engagement among high-performance youth athletes: A multiple mediation analysis

“…Such findings parallel those highlighting the influence of external regulation for negative psychological states, namely athlete burnout (i.e. Amotivation has been related to learned helplessness, where individuals withdraw effort because of perceptions of incompetence and loss of control (Hsu, 2011). Furthermore, the moderately strong inverse relationship between amotivation and engagement also adds to the engagement literature in sport by suggesting the deleterious effects of amotivation.…”

Why Can’t We Learn Foreign Languages in Turkey? Some Psychological Reasons Behind It

“…Therefore, students attribute their failure to a cause as a result of other failures in previous experiences. Hsu (2011) examined EFL college students' learned helplessness when learning English in Taiwan, concluding that learners who are neurotic are more sensitive to failure whereas students with traits of openness, extraversion and agreeableness can reactivate their extrinsic motivation when supported externally. Apparently, personality traits have an effect on academic performance.…”

An examination of turkish college-level students’ learned helplessness states in efl context

“…Likewise, learned helplessness theory ascertains that uncontrollable events lead individuals to experience lack of will to control them (motivational deficit), lack of belief that the events can be controlled and if the events are deterrent, individuals feel fear and depression (Winefield, 1979). In addition, Hsu (2011) remarks these deficits within a student perspective in a similar manner and says that students with learned helplessness do not feel confident in controlling their learning process after failure and give up, which explains the motivational deficit, and learned helplessness stemmed from cognitive deficit shows that students cannot apply logical thinking and cognitive flexibilities to the process, which will pave the way for depression; this depression can also result from emotional deficit, which views learning as futile despite efforts.…”

“…Besides, continuous failure appears to lead students to give up (two citations), and thus most probably to feel unable to learn (two citations) and to lose hope (one citation). Hsu (2011) also states that inability to use English to speak to a foreigner causes distress for students. Likewise, difficulty in understanding (three citations) raises the sense of incapability to learn English.…”