An Empirical Study On Relations Between Non-intelligence Factors And English Proficiency Of Non-English Majors

With the application of humanistic psychology in the study of second language acquisition since the 1960s, researchers and teachers have shown great interest in non-intelligence factors affecting students'language learning.Four kinds of non-intelligence factors: motivation, anxiety, strategy and self-efficacy are studied in the present thesis. Compared with previous studies, the present study has the following innovations: (1) Four non-intelligence factors are studied simultaneously, which is a significant progress. (2) Previous studies just explored the correlations between English proficiency and non-intelligence factors while the present study stresses the direct and indirect influence between them with structural equation modeling. (3) Apart from the relationships between English proficiency and non-intelligence factors, the direct and indirect influences among non-intelligence factors are also examined with structural equation modeling.The present study starts by reviewing literature on non-intelligence factors at home and abroad, and then tries to find out whether there is still space to be developed in this area. Then, after pointing out the insufficiency in the already performed research, we explore by adopting quantitative and qualitative approaches: (1) To what extent do these non-intelligence factors relate to students'English proficiency? (2) What are the differences of non-intelligence factors between high level students and low level students? (3) To what extent do these non-intelligence factors affect English proficiency directly and indirectly? (4) How do specific non-intelligence factors affect each other directly and indirectly?This study was conducted mainly through the mature questionnaires already made by earlier researchers. Interview as a qualitative method was also employed to consolidate the study's validity. The subjects were 160 college juniors(majoring in Chinese, maths, education and law)at Zhixing College of Northwest Normal University. With the help of the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS, version 16.0) and structural equation modeling liseral, related questions were answered.This study has yielded several findings: (1) English learning motivation as a whole does not correlate with English proficiency significantly, but intrinsic integrative motivation and extrinsic integrative motivation are correlated with English proficiency significantly. Foreign language classroom anxiety, language learning strategy and language self-efficacy are all significantly correlated with English proficiency. (2) Except English learning motivation, differences between low level students and high level students are significant (p value <0.05) in terms of non-intelligence factors. (3) Only self-efficacy can directly influence English proficiency. Foreign language classroom anxiety and language learning strategy can influence English proficiency through language self-efficacy indirectly, while language learning motivation influences English proficiency by a further indirect approach. (4) Four non-intelligence factors influence each other directly. Language learning motivation directly influences the other three non-intelligence factors. Foreign language classroom anxiety can influence language self-efficacy both directly and indirectly through language learning strategy. Language learning strategy gets influenced directly from language learning motivation and foreign language classroom anxiety and it influences directly language self-efficacy at the same time.The current study has several implications for English teaching and learning at Chinese college level: (1) Instrumental motivation should be emphasized. (2) Because there is a negative correlation existing between foreign language classroom anxiety and English proficiency, it is highly recommended that English teachers assess the anxiety level of the students and undertake efforts to help students to lower foreign classroom learning anxiety. (3) Language learning strategy and language self-efficacy should be fully exploited. The present study also has some limitations though it was designed with great care: (1) Compared with the total number of non-English majors across the country, the number of the participants was relatively small. What's more, all the participants come from the same school, which can not represent all colleges in China. (2) CET-4 test paper and the English final paper do not obtain the items reflecting students'oral English ability. (3) This study only took four kinds of non-intelligence factors into consideration.