Exploring The Role Of Pygmalion Effect On EFL Learning In China Regional University Context

Second language teaching research has a history of more than 100 years during which,various approaches or methods of teaching emerged like mushroom after rain. The earlierresearch on second acquisition and teaching focused on language teaching itself, while thelater work attached great importance to the aspect of cognitive behavior of the learners. Nowa trend of cross-disciplinary research method seems to enjoy the popularity in this researcharea.As is pointed out, English teaching has close relationship with educational psychology(Wang, 2005). Pygmalion effect which is also called Rosenthal effect is a psychologicalphenomenon of the realization of expectancy. From the famous experiment carried out byRosenthal and Jacobson in 1968, it has been widely used in various fields such as medicine,education, enterprise management and so on. The researchers attempted to study on how toimprove the self-confidence, self-respect, and self-improvement of the patients, students, andemployees through changing the expectancy from the doctor, the teacher, and the manager.However, few studies about Pygmalion effect on English learning are found in the area offoreign language teaching research. The limited papers found in journals in China are mainlyabout opinions of the effect, and there are few empirical studies on it. The author attempted toborrow the theories of Pygmalion effect together with that on English learning strategies,based on which the author designed the case study, in which, 2 selected subjects regularlywrote to their parents for creating Pygmalion effect environment, and finally the longing forpraise in people's nature was accelerated. The author holds the hypothesis that Pygmalioneffect can successfully trigger the metacognitive experience of English majors, which bringgreat impetus in metacognitive monitoring in study to significantly improve the achievement.The research was carried out in two steps. First, 111 English majors were asked to respond tothe Strategy Inventory for Language Learning in order to prove the positive correlationbetween metacognitive strategy and achievement. Second, in the case study carried out inGuangxi University, by means of interviews, diaries, questionnaires, and analysis of students'letters and achievements, the author explore and try to find the answers of two questions: 1)what is the correlation between Pygmalion effect and the students' metacognitive monitoringin study? 2) how does Pygmalion effect trigger students' awareness of metacognitive strategies? The result indicates that Pygmalion effect can promote students' longings forachievement and the metacognitive experience, and reinforce their self-monitoring andbehaviors. This course has successful effect on students who lack English learning motivationin improving their achievements. The inspiration of this research is :the good use ofPygmalion effect by various means in English teaching can strengthen students' self-respect,self-confidence and self-improvement so that to reinforce their self-monitoring forapproaching the expected goals.