An Experimental Study Of The Correlation Between Self-Efficacy Cultivation And English Writing Proficiency Of English Majors

English writing, as one of the basic four English skills, plays an important role in ESL and EFL teaching and learning. Obviously, how to improve students’ English writing ability has become one of the most important tasks which cannot be neglected in English teaching. English writing self-efficacy, which refers to the belief in one’s ability to complete a specific writing task,is the product resulting from the process when self-efficacy theory is applied to English writing instruction. Numerous research on this topic abroad and at home show that writing self-efficacy has a close correlation with writing proficiency, but there are few experimental studies on enhancing students’ writing self-efficacy so as to improve their writing proficiency. Based on a teaching experiment, this study is designed to cultivate English majors’ writing self-efficacy in order to explore the influence of writing self-efficacy cultivation on English majors’ writing proficiency.The present study was carried out a ten-week experiment on English writing self-efficacy cultivation. The participants were 58 English sophomores of two parallel classes chosen from a key university in Shandong province. Of the two classes, one was randomly named as the experimental group and the other as the control group. The experimental group received the writing self-efficacy training as well as the usual way of writing instruction, while the control group continued to be taught as usual. Before and after the experiment, both groups were given the pre- and post- writing tests and questionnaires respectively, and four students from the experimental group were randomly chosen to take part in an oral interview. The data obtained were processed through quantitative analysis supplemented with qualitative analysis. With the help of software SPSS 20.0, quantitative analysis was done about the data from questionnaires and writing tests, so as to test the differences of the two groups’ writing self-efficacy and writing proficiency before and after the experiment, and qualitative analysis was done to analyze the results of the oral interview.The final results of the study are as follows:(1) After they had received the training for self-efficacy cultivation, the experimental group of English majors had had their writing self-efficacy enhanced significantly, and their writing proficiency was also improved greatly.(2)The control group had also made much progress in their writing performance, but not so great a progress as the opposite group did, which fully proved that purposeful training for self-efficacy cultivation mixed in writing instruction class is helpful in developing English majors’ writing ability.(3) Individual differences were also found in the result that the English majors’ existing level of writing self-efficacy can affect greatly their later enhanced level of self-efficacy in terms of degree. To be more specific, the low level group’s English writing self-efficacy was enhancedto a much higher degree than that of the high level group after the cultivation experiment. These findings of this study certainly have important implications for English writing teachers and English learners. Firstly, English writing teachers can adopt a proper way of training for self-efficacy cultivation to enhance students’ writing self-efficacy, for the final goal of improving their writing proficiency. Secondly, English majors themselves should pay more attention to enhancing their own writing self-efficacy in daily writing practices.Of course, there are still limitations in the present study, such as a smaller size of the sample and a shorter period of the cultivation experiment. Even so, the study has achieved its expected results. And it, above all, can offer some valuable pedagogical references and suggestions for further investigation and cultivation of writing self-efficacy and writing instruction.