The Research On "Self" And Its Influence On Foreign Language Acquisition

Looking back on the history of language acquisition, we may find that almost every teaching approach that was popular for a while was based on the psychological theories which occupied a dominant position at that time. As early as the last century, the early researchers in language acquisition field have taken endeavors to develop the psychological science of acquisition and solve the practical issues in language acquisition by applying psychological theories. The focus of psychological research has an influence on the research focus of foreign language acquisition.When behaviorism was in dilemma last century, a new revolution in psychology—the cognitive revolution swept over the whole psychological field. From then, more and more emphasis was laid on the research on self and its related issues. With the research going into deep and the development of Albert Bandura's social learning theory based on observational learning, the researchers on psychology gradually broke through the scope of behaviorism and began to pay attention to the self system and the internal factors of individuals. In the 1970s, Bandura put forward the concept of self-efficacy and then the theory of self-efficacy was founded.The research achievements of psychology were applied to foreign language acquisition, linguists began to pay attention the relationship of self and self-efficacy to foreign language acquisition.So far, no uniform understanding or systematic conclusion of self in foreign language acquisition has been drawn both at home and abroad, owing to the complexity of the concept of self. The author starts from the discussion of the self concept, looking back on the research history of self in psychology; then analyzes the different expressions of self in collectivistic and individualistic cultures and tries to expatiate on self from the humanistic angle. The self-efficacy in self system is not only a subjective factor but a factor between motivation and behaviors. It is a self-creative capability, which develops with the growing of individuals.This paper tries to conduct an interdisciplinary study on self and self-efficacy, and analyzes the close relationship of self and self-efficacy to foreign language learning and teaching from both the foreign language learners'and teachers'points of view. The author considers that self-efficacy influences the learning strategies of foreign language learners. Learners with high senses of self-efficacy are more inclined to take active and effective learning strategies and more motivational, which affects the learning performance; self-efficacy influences foreign language learners'language anxiety; and at the same time, the teachers'sense of self-efficacy is closely related to foreign language teaching. So in the process of foreign language acquisition, both the learners'and the teachers'sense of self-efficacy should be strengthened.