A Study On English Self-efficacy Of Non-english Major Ethnic Minority College Students

Ever since Bandura put forward the concept of self-efficacy in1977, increasing number of studies has been done on it. As an essential predictor of academic achievements, research in the field of education is also countless. The numerous studies on English self-efficacy demonstrate that there is a significant positive correlation between English self-efficacy and English academic performance and it works as an important predictor of English academic performance. However, in the studies of English learning self-efficacy, the involved subjects are mainly the students of Han nationality, while there are few studies on non-English major ethnic minority college students’ English self-efficacy. Given the important role played by English self-efficacy in English study and the fact that scanty research has been done in this regard, this thesis aims to conduct a study on the non-English major ethnic minority college students’ English self-efficacy to provide some helpful suggestions for the English teaching for ethnic minority students.The research adopts questionnaire and interview to collect data. The modified questionnaire is based on the ESES made by Zhang Risheng(2004), which contains four dimensions: sense of competence, sense of challenge, sense of effort and sense of frustration. This research aims to have a comprehensive picture of the current status of non-English major ethnic minority college students’ English self-efficacy and its relationship with subjects’ personal variables like gender, grade, family background, personality and English academic performance. After distributing questionnaires to 120 non-English major college students from Nanchang Institute of Science and Technology, the interview was carried out by selecting 20 students among 120 subjects to make a complement to the present research.The research results reveal that, firstly, the non-English major ethnic minority college students’ English self-efficacy is generally low. Of the four dimensions, students’ sense of effort in English study ranks top, followed by sense of frustration, sense of competence and sense of challenge. Secondly, it is found that female students possess higher English self-efficacy than males do. Students from rural areas hold higher English self-efficacy than students from urban areas do. Extroverted students’ English self-efficacy is higher than that of introverted students, while no significant difference is found between them. Nevertheless, a significant difference is achieved in English self-efficacy between freshmen and sophomores and sophomores have higher English self-efficacy than freshmen do. Thirdly, the results demonstrate that there exists a significant positive correlation between English self-efficacy and English academic performance. In other words, students with higher English self-efficacy have better performance in English study.According to the analysis on the research results, some suggestions on how to improve non-English major ethnic minority college students’ English self-efficacy are proposed. These suggestions are as follows: the instructors should help students set proper goals and attribute success and failure properly; create a relaxing learning environment and provide students with more appropriate and positive feedback and then establish a multi-appraisal system.