A Study Of The Relationship Between English Self-concept And Language Learning Strategies

In SLA research, individual differences play an important role. Self-concept, as one aspect of individual differences, has drawn the attention of more and more researchers particularly those in China. In recent years, studies on English self-concept have been focused on the formation of English self-concept of adolescents, the structure and characteristics of English self-concept of college English majors, the effect of English pronunciation self-concept on English learners, and so on. Generally speaking, it was found that academic achievement was related to academic self-concept, and that a clear and positive self-concept could lead to a healthy personality such as confidence, kindness, generosity and stable emotion.In the meantime, for the past several decades, language learning strategies have become one of the hottest topics in the field of SLA. A considerable number of empirical studies suggested that learning strategies can contribute to the effectiveness of second or foreign language learning and provide implications for language teaching. A lot of research devoted to strategy training also showed that such strategy training can facilitate students' learning if individual characteristics were taken into account when teachers were designing training courses. Although lots of people admit the importance of self-concept and learning strategies, little research probed into the relationship between them. The present study, in response to the above concern on individual characteristics, concentrated on the relationship between self-concept and language learning strategies.Participants of the study were 157 students majoring in computer science and international trade and business at Shandong University of Finance. Quantitative data was collected through two questionnaires. The first one was the revised Chinese version of self-concept scale modified by Pan (2003) from Marsh's (1992) SQDII. Since the focus of this study was the relationship between English self-concept and language learning strategies, three subscales were adopted, namely, general English self-concept, English speaking self-concept and English pronunciation self-concept. General English self-concept can reflect the overall level of learners' English self-concept, so it is necessary to be tested. Speaking and pronunciation are important tools for learners' communication, and to some extent, speaking can show learners' abilities of listening, writing, vocabulary, and grammar. Therefore, three of them can embody learners' English self-concept. Thus the scale was a 26-item, six-point Likert one. Another inventory based on Oxford' classification system of learning strategies (SILL) was used to assess learner's strategy use. By the reliability analysis, it was found that all these coefficients were significantly high, and the two questionnaires were reliable respectively.Based on the detailed analysis of data, some major findings through statistical analysis of SPSS 13.0 were summarized as follows. First of all, the subjects' English self-concept was medium, and the subjects' English pronunciation self-concept was better than their general English self-concept and English speaking self-concept. The most of language learning strategies could be used by the subjects during their study, and the compensation category was most frequently used. Second, gender had no significant effects on the general English self-concept and English speaking self-concept. However, there was statistically significant gender difference in the English pronunciation self-concept. Gender difference had a weak relation with learning strategies. Female students were found to more frequently use the strategies of centering one's learning, planning and organizing and empathy than male students. Third, there were no statistically significant differences in both English self-concept and language learning strategies between students from city and town and ones from countryside. Finally, in terms of the relationship between English self-concept and language learning strategies, by Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple regressions, it was concluded that general English self-concept, English speaking self-concept and English pronunciation self-concept had the highest correlation level with the cognitive strategy, and English pronunciation self-concept had the weakest correlation level with the memory strategy and compensatory strategy.The findings of the study imply that there are some pedagogical implications for English learning and teaching. At the same time, teachers should attach importance to enhancing students' English self-concept level in training their language learning strategies.