Study On Self-Identity Development Of College Students In English-Learning

Self-identity is closely associated with language use, and linguistic distinctiveness is a basic component of personal identity and hence the development of proficiency in a second language has implication for the individual's self-identity,and in turn,the individual's self-identity has implication for second language acquisition.In the early 1970s Lambert proposed the Social Psychological Model of L2 learning, in which he put forward two terms: additive bilingualism and subtractive bilingualism. The former refers to situation that proficiency in a L2 does not replace or reduce the importance of the first language,in other words, the learner may experience the change in self-identity without losing his original identity; the latter means L2 learning requires learners to enhance cultural assimilation to the target language group. Domestic scholar GaoYihong (1994,2001)put forward the 1+1>2 model with productive bilingualism in her dissertation for doctor degree. Although Gao and her associates have made ongoing efforts to further study the change in self-identity of L2 learners, their focus is mainly centered on students in developed eastern universities in China,there is no paper reflect students self-identity development in the northwest region in China till now. This paper take the freshmen in the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University as subjects, firstly, by using questionnaire did some investigation to reflect the current situation of self-identity changes there. The results show that self-confidence variation is the largest; as to cultural identity, additive change is the major trend, along with subtractive changes and zero changes; only a few of top students reflect some traits of productive change. Meanwhile by using SPSS, the research analyzed the effects of major and gender on students'self-identity changes. The findings are like this: female students are more sensitive than boys to experiencing success and frustration in learning English; Liberal arts majors, comparing to science majors, and science majors comparing to engineering students, they experience more obvious self identity change in English study.Then the researcher interviewed both teachers and students respectively. Findings from teachers'interview are: Most of the language teachers identify the important role of the culture in language learning; while teaching, they would explain those western cultures which appeared in the textbooks for students, but because of the national requirement for students to pass CET4 and CET6, they still emphasize language skills in teaching. In addition, most of language teachers'teaching mainly based on their life and teaching experience, which is lack of theoretical system. There are two findings from students'interview: Firstly, Learners'initiative and self-identity are interactive with each other, secondly, foreign language learning and social context are interactive relationship.Through the findings, the author put forward some suggestions to facilitate students to develop productive self-identity through L2 learning. It is composed of five chapters, which is organized as the following:Chapter 1 serves as an introduction of the study, including the background, purpose, significance and structure of the study.Chapter 2 is literature review, which has five subparts: Definition of Identity, Identity theory and AL, Social Identity Theory, Self-identity and Self-Identity and language learningChapter 3 focuses on research methodology, focusing on research questions, research design, and procedure of the study and data analysis.Chapter 4 the results and discussions part, containing introduction, analysis and discussion of questionnaire, results of One-way ANOVA tests ,analysis of Interviews and conclusionsChapter 5 is about major findings, implications, limitations and recommendation of the study.