English Pronunciation Self-concept And Listening:Their Dynamic Relationship In Junior Middle School Students

English Pronunciation Self-concept (EPSC) refers to one's self-perception and judgment about his English pronunciation performance and pronunciation learning ability in the process of English pronunciation learning. Previous researches show that one's English pronunciation self-ability has significantly related to his English scores. As is known to all, Listening is very important for it is one of the four basic skills of English learners. Researches of English listening have been concentrated on listening teaching, the process of listening comprehension, listening strategies and so on. They didn't dig out the deep cognitive factors of learners, and few of them carried out the empirical study on the relationship of EPSC and listening performance.This study took students of a junior high school in Fuzhou, Fujian Province as the subjects, and investigated the dynamic relationship of EPSC and listening comprehension from Grade 7 to Grade 9. Specifically, this study aimed to explore the following questions:1. How does the EPSC change from Grade7 to Grade 9?2. How does the relationship between students' EPSC and their listening performance change from Grade 7 to Grade 9?3. To what degree can EPSC explain students'listening performance from Grade 7 to Grade 9?All the data were analyzed with SPSS and the main findings are as follows:1) there is a decline of students'EPSC from Grade 7 to Grade 9 ; 2) the coefficient of EPSC and listening scores develops with their grades rise. Especifically, in Grade 7, the correlations between the Pronunciation self-concept, Oral-English self-concept and their listening scores get highest. While in Grade 9, the correlations between the General self-concept and listening scores remain the highest; 3) with grades rise, the EPSC can explain more and more of students' listening performance. More narrowly, in Grade 7, only English pronunciation self-concept can explain students' listening comprehension; in Grade9, only the General self-concept can significantly explains listening variance. However, in Grade 8, the General self-concept and English pronunciation self-concept can explain students'listening scores; moreover, the explanatory powers are enhanced when they are combined.