An Investigation Of Self-identity Changes After English Learning Among Students In Rural Primary Schools

Having acquired a new language,one's awareness of his or her own personal abilities and values will be correspondingly changed to some extent,that is,self-identity change.As one of the non-linguistic outcomes of language learning,self-identity change has been the spotlight in the eyes of western scholars in the 1980 s.But it is in the past decades that self-identity change has been paid much attention to in China.Looking through the researches related to self-identity,most of the subjects chosen by foreign and domestic experts are immigrants or students from integrated universities,independent colleges or vocational colleges.Little attention had been paid to junior or senior school students and almost no attention was on students in elementary schools.This study chose primary schools students in rural areas of Hubei province to conduct empirical research investigating the general condition of self-identity change after learning English.The present study addresses the following questions:1)Have the primary school students undergone self-identity changes after learning English at a young age? What types of changes have they undergone?2)Does the duration of English learning affect self-identity change? What are the differences between self-identity changes of students who have learned English for 1year,2 years,3 years respectively?3)Is there any correlation between self-identity changes and the primary students' English achievement?Based on Gao Yihong's questionnaire(2011)on English learning and self identity change,this study investigated self-identity changes of 419 students in Grade 4,Grade5,Grade 6 from two primary schools in rural areas of Hubei province.The author modified Gao Yihong's questionnaire(2011)and divided English learners' self-identity changes into seven dimensions: positive self-confidence change,negative self-confidence change,productive change,subtractive change,split change,additive change and zero change.The study also adopted interview and test to collect necessary data.The data analysis was conducted with SPSS.20.0,using descriptive statistics,One-Way ANOVA and Pearson Correlation.The findings are:1)There are self-identity changes among rural primary school students and under the EFL context,negative self-confidence is the most prominent change while positive self-confidence change is not so significant;subtractive change and spilt change play an important part in primary students' cultural identities while additive and productive change are beyond primary students' reach.2)Among all the self-identity changes,primary students' self-confidence was relatively stable and not influenced by learning duration,but their cultural identity has changed.Students with longer learning duration tended to be more likely to have positive self-identity changes,such as additive and productive changes and they would also go through less cultural conflicts.3)As non-linguistic outcomes,rural primary students' self-identity changes were not correlated with their English achievement,that is,students with higher English proficiency did not necessarily experience self-identity changes while students with lower English achievement did not necessarily have no self-identity changes.This investigation not only enriches the study on self-identity in English learning,the results also give implications to English teaching and learning in schools of rural villages and towns.On one hand,English teachers in rural primary schools need to use different ways to monitor learners' self-identity,and choose appropriate teaching contents and teaching methods to stimulate positive self-identity changes.On the other hand,primary students need to have a comparative learning of the two different languages and cultures to achieve productive changes.