A Study On The Relationship Between Identity And English Achievements Among English Majors

Classical social psychology studies divide language learning results into “linguistic” and “non-linguistic” results.(Gardner,1985)Most scholars pay much attention to the influence of learning motivations,learning styles and strategies on English achievements(Lin,2014;Lu,2013;Li,2013),but ignore the researches on identity.Gao(2008)claims that it is necessary to carry out researches on language and identity under the cover of constructivism.Researches on the relationship between identity and English achievements have both theoretical and practical significances: from a theoretical perspective,connection between Bonny Norton's investment model and practical teaching can help explore English majors' identity in both formal and informal environment,with the help of the investment and imagined identity concepts under Norton's framework;from a practical perspective,the research may enable teachers and students to be more concerned about the corresponding influence between language and identity.Based on Bonny Norton's investment model,three questions will be explored: 1)What are the overall patterns of English majors' identity(Under Bonny Norton' investment model,what are the overall patterns of students' imagined identity,investment concepts and investment degree?)2)What is the correlation between English majors' identity and English achievements? 3)What kind of correlations exit between identity and English achievements during the process of English majors' English learning process?In view of above questions,120 juniors from Foreign Language Department in X university of Shandong province are selected in this research.The quantitative data was gathered from 96 valid questionnaires filled by the English majors.Then,Descriptive statistical analysis,Pearson correlation analysis and One-way ANOVA are conducted by SPSS 17.0.The collection of the qualitative data is through the narrative frameworks written by three students chosen randomly from the high,medium and low groups.Then,the text analysis method is employed to analyze the narrative frameworks.Combining the quantitative and qualitative analysis,the research results are as follows: 1)The imagined identity is mainly featured by the ideal L2 self;the investment concept is mainly characterized by the internal interests,personal development and social responsibilities.What's more,the ideal L2 self has positive relationship with the internal interests,personal interest and social responsibilities.In other words,the construction of the ideal L2 self is mainly driven by the internal interests,personal development and social responsibilities.The statistics also suggests that,the higher of the ideal L2 self,the higher of the investment degree.2)English achievements have significant positive correlations with the ideal L2 self;English achievements have significant positive correlation with internal interest,information media,personal development and social responsibilities;the English achievements have positive relationship with the investment degree without reaching significance.3)According to the analysis of narrative frameworks,the more clear and challenging of one's imagined identity,the wider of students' investment concepts.Moreover,the investment degree will be higher.However,because of the diversity and differences of students' imagined identity,long-term goals motivate students to invest in a wider scope without the consideration of the short-term test.Therefore,correlations between English achievements and investment degree is not high.Based on the theories of second language acquisition,some implications can be drawn as follows: for teachers,they should pay attention to how to cultivate students' language learning interests,how to guide students' personal development plan,and how to integrate the cultural knowledge into teaching.Therefore,the construction of students' ideal L2 self can be improved during students' language learning process.For students,they should be concerned about their imagined identity,and make more progress on the target English learning,so as to achieve the combination of identity construction and higher English achievements.This thesis concludes with the limitations and possible suggestions for future researches.