The Effect REBT Have on Procrastination in Middle School English Learners 英语专业毕业论文.doc

编号 学士学位论文the effect rebt have on procrastination in middle school english learners 学生姓名： 学 号： 20091306017 系 部： 外语系 专 业： 英语专业 年 级： 2009级 指导教师： 完成日期： 2013 年5 月08日中文摘要学业拖延一直是困扰着中学生学习的一个不容忽视的问题,个体存在学业拖延的现象会令其感到沮丧,一长期的学业拖延会阻碍学习目标的达成,降低学习兴趣,所以制定有效的学业拖延干预方案变得刻不容缓。目前我国对中学生学业拖延的干预研究相对较少,而理情行为疗法在帮助个体认识自我及改善自我等方面具有突出的优势,这为对学业拖延干预的研究提供了一个新的思路。对于中学生的教育不能简单采取填鸭式方法,而应采取一种既生动又有效的活动方式,积极心理学恰恰满足这一要求.因此本研究的目的便是为了探讨理情行为疗法对中学生学业拖延的改善效果.本研究在文献综述，实例研究以及个别访谈的基础之上，分析可以得出以下结论:理情行为疗法可以有效的改善中学生学业拖延的问题。关键词：理情行为疗法；中学英语学习者；学业拖延the effect rebt have on procrastination in middle school english learnersabstractit cannot be ignored that the problem of english academic procrastination is as common as flu for middle school students. existence of this phenomenon will make students feel frustrated. long-term delay will hinder the academic achievement of them and reduce their interest in learning english. therefore, it becomes urgent that the development of rebt programs for academic procrastination in english. nowadays, but few thesis have done with academic procrastination in the middle school english learners, but rebt, as an effective way to help students in self-understanding, self-improving, has obvious advantages, which also provides a new way of interval academic procrastination in middle school english learners. the purpose of this study is to explore weather the rational emotive behavior therapy can really deal with procrastination of middle school english learners ,since we teachers can not simply take the spoon-feeding method, but should take a lively and effective method. and rebt exactly meets this requirement. basing on the literature review, case studies and individual interviews, analysis, we can draw the following conclusions: certainly, rational emotive behavior therapy can effectively tackling procrastination.key words: rebt；middle school english learners；academic procrastinationiicontents中文摘要iabstractiiintroduction11. the summary of theory11.1 what is academic procrastination?11.2 whats rebt12. some typical style of procrastinators22.1 the perfectionist22.2 the dreamer22.3 the worrier32. 4 the deifier32.5 the crisis-maker32.6. the over doer33. some pitfalls in tackling procrastination44. one example of tackling procrastination with rebt54.1 awareness54.2 goals64.3 commitment64.4 persistence75. another case of tackling procrastination with rebt85.1 an analysis of the case95.1.1. limitation of his knowledge of english95.1.2. couldnt resist the lure of entertainment95.2 the psychological mechanism of procrastiatory behavior:95.3 coping strategies95.3.1 strengthen the concept of time95.3.2 change the irrational concept105.3.3 companions positive influence10conclusion11references12acknowledgement13introductionacademic procrastination is a well-known phenomenon among students. approximately 70% of students is reported procrastinating academic tasks (schouwenburg 1995), such as writing term papers, studying for exams or reading texts. instead, they engaged in a wide range of alternative and often more pleasant activities, such as watching tv, sleeping or talking with family members or friends steels(2007)definition of (academic) procrastination is “to voluntarily procrastination an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the procrastination” (p. 66). indeed, academic procrastination has been proven to result in harmful consequences, such as stress or lower grades (e.g. tice and baumeister 1997). therefore, it is not surprising that up to 60% of students reported a desire to reduce their academic procrastination (solomon and rothblum 1984).in light of these findings, two questions arise: why do students procrastinate at all? and how to deal with academic procrastinate effectively?1. the summary of theory1.1 what is academic procrastination?the concept of academic procrastination is a derivative in the study of procrastination, academic procrastination” is based on the “procrastination”, academic procrastination only refers to procrastination of certain person or with certain scene limitation, so if we want to have a accurate understanding of “academic procrastination”, we must first make sense the essence of procrastination”. “procrastination”derives from the latin word “procrastination” which meansdefer till the morning and can be described as putting off until later what our better judgment tells us ought to be done now and thereby incurring unwanted consequences through such dilatory behavior.1.2 whats rebtrational-emotive behavior therapy (rebt) is a pioneering form of cognitive behavior therapy (cbt) of the twentieth century, and although its very popular among practicing clinicians as well as members of the public, it has been relatively neglected in the professional and scientific literature. the core of the theory is abc theory of personality. a refers to things antecedents; b refers to the beliefs of us.c refers to the consequences of things. if there are antecedents, there will always be consequences, but under the same situation (a), different people will have different concept and interpretation (b1 and b2), there will always be different results (c1 and c2). this is due to different evaluation, beliefs and interpretation of us. founder of emotional abc theory ellis said: it is because we often have some irrational belief, leading to our emotional distress. in the course of time, these irrational beliefs can lead to emotional disorders. people usually think evoked event a led directly to the persons mood and behavior results in c, what happened to cause different kinds of emotional experience. its easy to find different people will experience different emotion when facing the same situation. the further development of the theory of abc, an increase of part d and e, d (disputing) refers to the intervention and resistance to non theoretical belief, e (effective) refers to the use of rational belief effective or appropriate emotional behavior instead of irrational beliefs and inappropriate emotional behavior.2. some typical style of procrastinators2.1 the perfectionist theyre reluctant to start or finish a task in case it proves to be less than perfect and therefore is seen to fail in his own and/or others eyes;2.2 the dreamerthey want life to go smooth ly and avoids difficult challenges. grandiose ideas are not translated into achievable goals. ill at ease with daily reality, she retreats into fantasy;2.3 the worrier they fear things going wrong and being overwhelmed by events (lots of what if? thinking); risk or change is avoided and he has little confidence in his ability to do task that is concerned with english.2. 4 the deifiertheyre resistant and argumentative towards others instructions because this means he is being told what to do or other people are trying to control him. an indirect form of defiance is passive-aggressiveness such as saying yes to english teachers request when the student really means no because she is not willing to take on the responsibility of doing the task within the allotted time;2.5 the crisis-maker they like to display bravado in declaring he cannot get motivated until the 11th hour or this is when he does his best work;living on the edge gives him an adrenaline rush. he has a low threshold for boredom in his life. leaving things until the last minute often means that they dont get done on time or opportunities are missed;2.6. the over doer they take on too much english task without establishing what her priorities are; time is managed inefficiently leading to some task not being done or done poorly or finished late. above all, individuals always display a mix of procrastination styles: some are more prominently displayed than others. underpinning these various procrastination styles there are likely to be found ego disturbance and discomfort disturbance beliefs. ego disturbance relates to the demands that we impose on ourselves and the consequent negative self-ratings that we make when we fail to live up to our self-imposed demands. an ego disturbance belief likely to be found in perfectionists is i must do the task very well or else im a failure. discomfort disturbance is related to the domain of human comfort and occurs when we make dogmatic commands that comfortable life conditions must exist. a discomfort disturbance belief likely to be found in dreamers is i shouldnt have to work hard to fulfill my dreams. i cant stand having to get my mind around all those boring details. of course, clients can have both types of beliefs underpinning their procrastination. for example, with perfectionists, as well as fear of failure, some may have discomfort disturbance beliefs related to their need to reach their high standards effortlessly(e.g. i shouldnt have to struggle!).3. some pitfalls in tackling procrastinationthe teacher may focus on the consequences of students procrastination and explore his feelings about it, (e.g. i feel really pissed off and guilty about missing the deadline for the paper. im such a failure because i couldnt deliver on time), which unwittingly perpetuates the students procrastination in teaching as spending time helping student ameliorate disturbed feelings through cognitive restructuring (i.e. belief change). while this is helpful and may be necessary as a first step if the student is very upset about his inaction, nevertheless the key issue remains uncovered: what held the student back from getting on with the task? this focus on outcome results in what bishop (2000) calls thepost-bcs, i.e. the beliefs and consequences related to the continuing procrastination which is treated as an activating event. in contrast, it is usually better to treat the procrastination as a c and to focus on the as and bs that preceded the c, hence, the pre-abs(bishop 2000, p. 137). in the above example, to discover what the client said to himself at the time in order to procrastination finishing the english task on time. what can seem perplexing to the teacher is when student is asked how he would feel if he got on with the task and replies great, but no action is forthcoming. why is the student depriving himself of this feeling by his continuing inaction? anticipating feeling great is insufficiently motivating because the student still has to face starting the task which usually means a discomfort phase to contend with which currently acts as a deterrent to action (e.g. there is so much information to sift through. ill feel overwhelmed, get angry and frustrated and give up). so it is important for the teacher not to take feeling great at face value and thereby expect constructive action to occuremotional disturbance still blocks the way! even if his student forces himself to complete this particular task and is relieved once it is finished, his disturbance-inducing thinking is likely to be unmodified (e.g. i hated doing do it. i felt terrible. i shouldnt have to put myself through that again). as grieger and boyd (1980, p. 36) point out, focusing onpractical problems before emotional problems tends to rob students of their motivation to solve their emotional problems, leaving them more comfortable yet still disturbed.4. one example of tackling procrastination with rebtdryden (2000a) specifies four key stages to overcome procrastination: (1) becoming aware of ones procrastination; (2) developing goal-directed behavior to carry out currently avoided tasks; (3) making a commitment to tolerate short-term hardship in order to achieve longer-term gains; (4) being persistent in maintaining an anti-procrastination outlook. i will use a student ive coached? to illustrate his progress through these stages.4.1 awarenesslee , who wanted to enrolled on some courses to learn more about english and what further knowledge he needed to acquire. having completed the task in school, he continually put off writing compositions sayingmaybe i need more reference, maybe im running before i can walk. as lee says in relation to generating awareness regarding ones present behavior: how do you know when you need to stop doing one thing and start doing something else (1998, p. 68). one clue to answering this question was lees agitation about notgetting on with it(i.e. writing a composition) which his rationalizations and specious reasons for the procrastination could not ease. imagery is a good technique tobypass defenses of rationalization and intellectualization (weisharr 1993, p.117) and therefore i asked lee to imagine making an immediate start in writing a composition and how did he feel in doing so? he said he felt strong anxiety related to theconfidence issue. driving the anxiety was his irrational belief: i must be confident about my english writing abilities before i start because if i cant write something good in english, then i was a failure. in rebt terms, a rigid demand (must) leading to an extreme conclusion (self-depreciation) if the must is not met which is likely to be the case as musts are infrequently met (neenan and dryden 2002b).lee was able to see how his irrational beliefs maintained his procrastination: he was demanding to feel confident before taking on coaching clients instead of realizing that confidence develops over time through repeated english writing practice. in other words, he was putting the cart before the horse. however, awareness does not necessarily lead to action as lee had already read a book on procrastination which he said was very insightful butsomehow the book didnt give me the kick-start i needed. practicing writing would show him how to self-administer the kick-start and how to keep the process of change going.4.2 goalsin order to develop an action plan for change, lee needed to pinpoint a clear, specific, measurable goal that was within his control to achieve. initially, he said his goal was to become a coach but this was a general directive for change and, if left in those terms, likely to encourage more procrastination by lee as his gaze would be on the distant future rather than focused on what needs to done in the present to get his anti-procrastination plan underway. after discussion, the short-term concrete goal was to write at least three compositions within the next week.4.3 commitmentwhen a student states his goals for change, this does not automatically mean that he has committed himself to carrying out the hard work to achieve these goals. in english learning, some clients want a largely effort-free progress towards their goals. grieger (1991, p. 60) states that effecting change is a 24-hour-a-day,7-day-a-week thing. while this view may sound extreme, it can be used as a yardstick by students to measure their level of effort. if students want to make gains, then they need to embrace hardworking now in order to feel relatively pleasure later about continuing the work of change .lee was taught to dispute (d), the next step after the abcs of the problem have been established, and his irrational beliefs by examining their rigid and extreme nature and replacing them with rational beliefs to help reduce the frequency, intensity and duration of his anxiety and thereby manage better his uncertainty about the quality of his writing skills: i would like to feel confident right now about my english writing abilities but i realize that my confidence and ability as a english learner will develop over time with practice . if that happens, what i wont do is call myself a failure; instead i will accept myself as a fallible english learner. this rational alternative to his irrational belief was lengthy and elaborate as it needed to take a rounded view of his development as a learner in stark contrast to the all or nothing quality of his irrational beliefs. in time, lee condensed his wordy rational belief to the terse: confidence comes with doing, so get on with it! an orderly sequence of goal-directed action steps coupled to timely completion dates was agreed with lee such as reading some model articles, preparing a brochure to making, focusing on teacher and coachs lessons. lee said he would try to carry out these steps. when students say theyll try, this suggests little effort or responsibility on their part to effect change and lacks the commitment that doing denotes. a way to teach students the difference between trying and doing is to ask them if at the end of the session they will try to leave the room or actually leave it. trying will keep them in the room indefinitely while doing means they will have left it in seconds. doing, coupled with a careful review of what has been done and what needs to be done next, is much more likely to bring results than trying which can become a vicious circle of constantly reviewing failed attempts at task completion. lee made himself a doer by implementing his action plan and trying slipped out of his vocabulary after the first few sessions of coaching.4.4 persistenceit can be easy for some students to think that an initial surge of productivity in tackling their procrastination heralds the end of their ill do it tomorrow attitudes. they can easily run out of steam after several days of effort and then find themselves reaching for their familiar excuses for inaction. the power in peoples willpower consists of their strong determination to change themselves plus persistent work and practice to carry out this determination. lee began to falter with his anti-procrastination plan particul