An Empirical Study On Promoting Chinese Senior Middle School Students’ English Speaking Self Efficacy

Ever since the concept of self-efficacy is proposed by Bandura (1977), it hasbeen a hot focus in various spheres. However, in China, the study of self-efficacy inEnglish learning is remarkably limited in correlative, cause and effect study, forexample, the study of its correlation with English learning competence, attribution,learning strategies, learning motivation. Few focus on the improvement andcultivation of English learning self-efficacy, though the effect of learning efficacycould no more be emphasized.On the other hand, psychological suggestion, which has been broadly used inmedical treatment, education and etc, has gained much attention since the latest30years. However, more research is need to establish an extensive understand aboutsuch method.Hence, this research attempts to testify whether Psychological Suggestion inEnglish speaking class can improve senior middle school students’ English speakingefficacy. Qualitative method and quantitative method are both employed in this study,which include questionnaire, oral English test and interview. Two classes from No.3Middle School of Nan Chang city, altogether82students participated in the presentstudy, one class as the experimental group and the other as the controlled group. Thequalitative data is analyzed with the help of SPSS17.0, and method of T-test andPearson correlation are applied. Generally, the experimental class, which is given asemester’s Psychological Suggestion in oral English class, improves significantly intheir English speaking efficacy. The main findings of the study are as follows:1) The application of psychological suggestion is able to enhance students’speaking efficacy effectively. Diverse types of psychological suggestion all exertspositive influence upon learners. Verbal suggestion is accepted as the most direct andeffective one in posing influence.2) English speaking efficacy of Students in senior middle school is of middle level.3) Positive correlation is found between English Speaking Self-efficacy and oralEnglish competence. As the ESSE is strongly correlated with Fluency (r=.836**,P=.000), Syntactic Complexity (r=.371~*, P=.043), Syntactic Variety (r=.630**,P=.000) and Accuracy (r=.798~**, P=.000) of oral production.At last, with the results from this research, some pedagogical implication isgiven, as well as the limitation of the study and suggestion for future research.