A Study Of Relationships Among English Pronunciation Self-concept, Pronunciation Learning Strategies And Pronunciation Achievement

With the shift from teachers and teaching to learners and learning in SLA, students’ affects have drawn attention from more and more educators and researchers. Self-concept refers to an individual’s perceptions and conceptions about himself which give rise to his sense of personal identity. As an important component of affective factors, self-concept has been proved by abundant studies to exert significant influence on language learning, not only on the outcomes but also on the learning process itself. Language learning strategies have been universally favored since1970s; studies on learning strategies emphasize different aspects, including the relationship between strategy use and learning performance and the factors that affect the use of learning strategies. This study attempts to explore relationships among verbal self-concept, language learning strategies and language learning performance from the perspective of pronunciation acquisition.Subjects involved in the study were62English majors at Zhixing College of Hubei University. The data were collected by using three instruments assessing students’ self-concept in English pronunciation, their learning strategies of English pronunciation and their pronunciation achievement respectively. Those data were subjected to descriptive, correlational, variance and regression analysis. Results show that the correlation between pronunciation self-concept and pronunciation achievement and that between pronunciation self-concept and pronunciation learning strategies are considerably significant, while the correlation between pronunciation learning strategies and pronunciation achievement is not statistically evident.The current study confirmed the great influence of pronunciation self-concept in language learning, providing practical implications for future second/foreign language learning and teaching.