A Study Of The Differences Caused By Gender, Family Income And Familial Cultivation In Non-English Major Students' Writing

In recent years, there have been a number of studies abroad and at home focusing directly on English teaching in such areas as grammar rules, textual structures and even teaching methodologies in order to improve students' English proficiency. However, to study the differences caused by gender, family income and familial cultivation in non-English major students' writing is rare and less paid attention to. This thesis aims to find out how the differences caused by gender, family income, and familial cultivation are revealed in non-English major students' compositions, which are affecting the quality of writing. By nature, the study of this thesis belongs to a crossing filed research, covering linguistics, English teaching, psychology and sociology. The methods adopted by the author in this thesis are qualitative research and quantitative research and the instruments used are the compositions and questionnaires done by the non-English major, second-year students of Tourism & Hospitality Administration College, Liaodong University. There are 72 students in this research whose majors are tourism administration. Through the investigation and the research of this thesis, the findings of the thesis concluded by the author are stated as follows. First, gender differences do exist in students' English writing. Female students have more comparative advantages in describing something, in imagination and in narration than male students. Second, family income is connected closely with students' education and can affect students' English writing either directly or indirectly. Third, the students from higher educational and middle, stable income families are performing much better in English writing compared with the students from other types of family backgrounds. Since the research of this thesis is only carried out in Liaodong University, there might be some limitations in the research. The significance of the study in the thesis is helpful to both the English teachers in stimulating the students' motivation in English learning and improving the quality of English writing instruction ,and also useful to students in their realizing the importance of cultural values and consciousness of self-realization in their development of intrinsic motivation in EFL learning .