An Empirical Study On The Correlation Between English Self-concept And Listening Achievement Of Chinese College Non-english Majors

"Self-concept"is a term taken from psychology, which means"a person's perception of himself or herself formed through experience with the environment and, in particular, through environmental reinforcements and the reflected appraisals of others"(Byrne, 1984). However, it has aroused increasing concern in the field of SLA because there exist a close relationship between self-concept and academic achievement, and important role academic self-concept plays in foreign language teaching and learning.A lot of previous studies explored the relationship between domain specific self-concept and global self-concept, and self-concept and academic achievement as well. Few researches have been conducted among these different domain specific self-concepts. The present paper focuses on the domain of listening and analyzes the correlation between English self-concept and listening achievement of Chinese college non-English majors. Students'English self-concept is compared to achievement in CET Band 4.To fulfill this purpose, four research questions have been proposed: 1). Is Chinese college non-English majors'English self-concept related to their English achievements? If yes, how they are related to each other? 2). Is the English listening self-concept of Chinese college non-English majors related to their performance in the domain of English listening? If yes, how they are related to each other? 3). How about the relationship between domain-specific English self-concept of Chinese college non-English majors and their global English self-concepts? If yes, how they are related to each other? 4). Is there any relationship between English listening self-concept and other domain-specific self-concept of Chinese college non-English majors? If there is, to what extent?The study adopts a quantitative approach and employs a rigorously tested English self-concept questionnaire and the survey was conducted among 118 Chinese college non-English majors sophomores randomly selected from Taiyuan Normal University (TYNU). The data collected were explained and analyzed through correlation, multiple regression and ANOVA analysis by using SPSS 14.0 software.Analyses of these statistics leads to the following findings: first of all, there exists a highly close relationship between English self-concept of Chinese college non-English majors and their English achievement and they are positively correlated with each other. The same correlation was also found to exist between English listening self-concept and their listening achievement. The relationship between them is reciprocal and positive listening self-concept can bring about better performance in listening, which will in return influence listening self-concept in a even favorable direction. Second, a more significant relationship is found to exist between domain specific English self-concepts and global English self-concept rather than among those domain specific self-concepts., which suggest the distinctiveness of these six domain specific constructs. And English grammar and listening self-concept are identified as two most powerful elements to predict global English self-concept of Chinese college non-English majors, which indicates the importance of listening in the process of English learning for most Chinese college non-English majors. Third, the relationship between speaking and listening self-concept is recognized as the closest one, which successfully demonstrates the close relationship between these two linguistic skills. As for the listening self-concept, vocabulary self-concept and speaking self-concept were found to be most closely related to listening self-concept.Based on the findings of the present study, several methodological suggestions which may be practical and meaningful in the application of teaching in the classroom setting have been offered to the college English teachers to improve their students'performance in listening comprehension.