Development Of Self-Concept In English Writing: The Affective Basis Of The Length Approach

The correlation between academic self-concept and learning achievement in English has been evidenced out by many researchers and to enhance English self-concept has become an urgent need in improving English learners' language learning proficiency. Accordingly, owing to the major position of writing among the basic language skills, how to develop English learners' self-concept in writing so as to improve their English writing has become a research focus. And aimed at solving this problem, the Length Approach was advocated as an innovative method for teaching English writing, which directly manipulated learners' affect.This thesis reported a study aimed to find out whether the Length Approach can develop Chinese EFL learners' self-concept in English writing, and on the basis of this affective development, improve their writing ability.60 university students majoring in English, from two junior classes, participated in the study. 29 of them formed the Experimental Group (EG), given self-concept development in their English writing course and treated with the Length Approach. The other 31 students served as the Control Group (CG), receiving traditional lessons without the Length Approach. All the other conditions of these two groups were controlled: the same teacher, teaching materials, writing tasks and length of class time. Data were collected from questionnaires on self-concept, pretest and posttest in English writing and analyzed with nonparametric tests.The results showed that the EG and the CG differed significantly in both their writing test and questionnaire survey after the teaching experiment, proving self-concept development as the affective basis of the Length Approach. It also proved the crucial importance of learners' affect in English learning.