Correlations Between Parenting Styles And English Self-concept Concerning Common Senior High School Students

English self-concept is one of the most important and crucial factors in second language acquisition, while the effect of parenting styles on children’s academic self-concept has always been an important topic in the field of educational psychology. Although there are lots of researches on academic self-concept and parenting styles at home and abroad, only limited amount of researches on English self-concept and parenting styles were carried out about senior high school students.To find out the relationships between English academic self-concept and parenting styles, qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis are conducted. The subjects are 150 students from four different classes of senior one in Fuliang Middle School and six of them were selected by random for an interview, the author adopted two scales to find the answers:one is the Academic Status Quo of High School Students (ASQHSS for short) designed by Pan(2003), its overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient ranges from 0.87 to 0.94. The other is EMBU by Yue, D. M. (1993), its Cronbach a=0.829 (father) and Cronbach a=0.876 (mother). The research questions are as follows:[1] What’s the status quo of senior high school students’English self-concept and parenting styles?[2] Is there any difference between males and females about English self-concept and parenting styles of senior high school students? If yes, to what degree?[3] Is there any relationship between English self-concept and parenting styles of senior students? If yes, to what degree?By using SPSS 16.0 software, description analysis, independent t-test analysis, correlation analysis and partial correlation analysis were computed to obtain the following results:Description analysis shows that the students get more emotional warmth and understanding from mother (Father:Mean±SD= 44.42±9.25; Mother:Mean±SD =49.03± 10.97), which means that severe father and kind mother are still the main parenting style nowadays. The basic level of English speaking self-concept and English pronunciation self-concept is relatively low (English speaking self-concept: Mean±SD=24.48±8.23; English pronunciation self-concept:Mean±SD=25.12±8.28).Independent t-test analysis finds that father has significant gender differences on father’s severe punishment dimension (t=2.927, p=0.04< 0.05); Father’s excessive interference dimension (t=2.569, p=0.01<0.05) and father’s rejection and denial dimension (t= 1.982, p=0.04<0.05), showing that father is stricter with males than females, while mother has significant gender differences on mother’s excessive interference (t=2.743, p=0.007<0.05), which means that mother pays more attention to males than females; The senior high students have gender differences on general English self-concept (t=-4.304, p=0.00<0.05) English speaking self-concept (t=-4.727, p=0.00<0.05), English pronunciation self-concept(t=-4.323, p=0.00<0.05) and English teacher relations self-concept (t=-4.281, p=0.00<0.05), showing that the level of English self-concept of females is higher than males’.Correlation analysis reveals that there is no closely relationship between parents and their children’s English self-concept. Partial correlation analysis proves that there is relatively low, but significant correlation between father’s preference and English speaking self-concept (r=-0.204, p-0.028< 0.05); Father’s preference and English pronunciation self-concept (r=.188, p=.045< 0.05), the correlation means that father’s preference has some impact on English speaking self-concept and English pronunciation self-concept to a certain extent.This paper is really valuable for the theory and practice in improving English self-concept of the senior high school students and prompting their parents to reflect their parenting styles, which helps parents choose proper parenting styles to educate their children and to facilitate the high middle school student’s English self-concept.