An Investigation Into The Self-identity Of English Majors In A Normal University

Self-identity is a widely used term in various fields, such as psychology,philosophy，sociology, mathematics, as well as linguistics. In the aspect of linguistics,self-identity refers to how a person understands his or her relationship to the world,how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the personunderstands possibilities for the future (Norton,2000). The better the constructiondevelops, the better one could know his or her uniqueness and commonality withothers and also the strengths and weaknesses to inspire them to create their own wayin the language learning process. Thus, the development of individual’ s self-identityhas an implication on foreign language learning, and in turn, the proficiency ofindividual foreign language learning has an implication for self-identity. There havebeen a lot of studies on the relationship between language learning and self-identity atabroad and at home. The focus of Chinese studies in recent years is mainly centeredon students in developed eastern universities, but few studies reflect studentsself-identity development in central regions till now.This study focuses on students in central areas and takes the207sophomores ofEnglish major in a normal university as subjects. The questionnaire used in this studyis designed by Gao Yihong (2004), all the results will be analyzed with the help ofSPSS13.0. After the questionnaire investigation, randomly8students are selected forinterview. The research aims to find out:1) the total condition of the English-majorsophomores’ self-identity change in a normal university;2) the difference inself-identity change between urban students and rural areas students;3) thecorrelation between students’TEM-4proficiency and self-identity changes.The results of the study are the following:1) among the five sub self-identitychanges, which are self-confidence change, subtractive change, additive change, zerochange, and productive change, the most obvious self-identity change isself-confidence; the lowest change is subtractive change, between them areproductive change, zero change, additive change;2) in general, there is nosignificant difference between urban and rural area students. Among the five subself-identity changes, self-confidence change shows significant change betweenurban and rural area students, while abstractive change, additive change, productivechange and zero change show no significant difference;3) in terms of relationship between TEM-4achievement and self-identity change, the score of TEM-4have apositive relationship with students self-identity changes. In other words, the betterthe English learners’ performances are, the more cultural identity changes they mayexperience.At last some implications are drawn based on the above findings and limitationsof the study are pointed out. The author also gives some suggestions to furtherrelated researches.