A Study On Non-english Major College Students’ Grammar Self-Concept

Self-concept is a multidimensional and multifaceted construct, which refers to a person’s self-perceptions formed through experience with and interpretations of his or her environment, which are influenced especially by evaluations of significant others,reinforcements, and attributions for the individual’s own behavior(Shavelson, 1976).English self-concept is the subcomponent of academic self-concept which is under general self-concept, which composes reading, writing, listening, speaking,pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary self-concept(Lau et al., 1999; Wang, 2004a).The positive reciprocal relationship between academic self-concept and academic achievement suggests that improved academic self-concept will lead to better achievement and improved achievement will lead to higher academic self-concept(Yueng & Lee, 1999). In other words, positive grammar self-concept will facilitate and enforce students’ English learning. Therefore, it is of great necessity to conduct a research on non-English majors’ grammar self-concept and reexamine their beliefs and perceptions towards grammar teaching and learning in college.The research intends to investigate:(1) What are the characteristics of non-English major students’ grammar self-concept?(2) What is the relationship between English grammar self-concept and global English self-concept and other domain-specific English self-concepts?(3) What are the non-English major students’ self-perceptions about the role of grammar and grammar teaching? Questionnaire and interview were adopted in the study and the subjects were 150 non-English major students from a university in Yunnan Province. The English self-concept questionnaire contained seven factors: global English self-concept, grammar,vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading and writing self-concept. Self-attribution questionnaire and grammar proficiency test were also used in this study. The self-attribution questionnaire included seven factors: interest, aptitude, effort, learning strategy, learning environment, teacher’s teaching and teacher’s attitude. The data collected was administered by SPSS 11.5 software with descriptive statistics,correlation, multiple regression and independent t-test analysis.The findings of the study showed that:(1) the general situation of non-English majors’ grammar self-concept is low, which is consistent with the results of grammar proficiency test. In other words, grammar self-concept, to a large degree, could be a predicator of non-English majors’ grammar achievement;(2) the global English self-concept that the non-English majors held was fairly high, but their domain-specific self-concepts are relatively low, which may be due to the complexities and difficulties in developing the specific skills in English language learning;(3) global English and domain-specific self-concepts are closely related with each other, which further reflects the multidimensional and hierarchical structure of self-concept;(4) among all the domain-specific self-concepts, reading and writing self-concept have great influence on grammar self-concept, suggesting that grammar is essential in reading and writing activities;(5) grammar is considered as a necessity in college English teaching in order to achieve a better performance in CET-4 and CET-6 examinations and to gain linguistic accuracy.The present study might be contributive to a better understanding of non-English major students’ grammar self-concept and their attitudes and beliefs about grammar learning and teaching, by which English teachers could improve college English teaching and take appropriate and corresponding measures to help develop students’ positive grammar self-concept and improve their grammar proficiency. In the end, the limitations and further research of the study were proposed.