Towards An Understanding Of Students’ Spoken English Self-concept Development:A Case Study Of Six Students In A University In China

It is claimed as a fact that talents who have the ability to communicate between cultures are highly valued. While an increasing number of people begin improving their verbal communication abilities, the problem of Dumb English still blocks their learning achievement. The presented conundrum reflects the importance of learners’psychological growth and development in language learning. Among many psychological concepts, self-concept is still not so familiar to foreign language educators, and it is rarely studied in foreign language acquisition and education. Scholars in psychology (Berretta 1970; Marsh 1990; Byrne 1990, Skaalvik & Valas 1999) have claimed that positive and healthy self-concept benefits learning behavior, the ability of adaptation and confidence. As a case study, the present study collects longitudinal data by means of interviews, participant observation, videotaping, journal and story writing. Six participants from a key university were invited to the study. By tracking their spoken English study for the first two years after entering university, this paper probes into their spoken English self-concept development, with a purpose of providing language teachers and educators with a clear picture of students’inner world, including their cognitive and affective feelings, and of providing theoretical basis and practical evidence of understanding learning spoken English as a foreign language.The present study reveals that the six participants have different self-description and judgement of their spoken English ability as well as the feelings of self-worth associated with the judgement. Their learning process also reflects the characteristics of stability, dynamics and contextuality in the self-concept devemopment. Spoken English Self-concept guides students to make breakthrough or stagnate in their learning process. From the perspective of Symbolic Interactionism, with an understanding of their inner dialogues in the process of language learning and practice, the study finds out different phases and states in students’spoken English self-concept development, namely, unawareness, conflict-being, conflict-intensified, conflict-resolved, conflict-avoided, conflict-suspended, and consistency.The study has shown that along with their traces of development in self-concept, students’inner dialogue concerning their spoken English ability exerts its impacts on students’ competence in aspects of time management, emotion management, interpersonal relationship and confidence in self-control, and in turn affects their self-identity, life purpose and integrity.As one of the few qualitative studies exploring the mechanism of self-concept formation in a specific field of spoken English, its development and features, and its impacts on foreign language education and personal development, the present study has shed some light on the relation between language learning and individual development for foreign language teachers and researchers as it provides both theoretical and practical understanding on spoken English learning and self-concept.