Self-Efficacy Theory

Albert Bandura，the founder of social learning theory，put forward the selfefficacy theory in 1977 from the perspective of social learning to explain the causes of motivation in special situations(Bandura，1977).Self-efficacy is an individual’s subjective assessment of his or her ability to accomplish certain tasks.The result of evaluation will directly affect a person’s behaviour motivation.

Bandura believes that human behaviour is not only influenced by behavioural results，but also by the expectation of self-behavioural ability and behavioural results formed through human cognition(Bandura，1977).He found that even though individuals know what kind of results a certain behaviour will bring，they do not necessarily engage in this kind of behaviour or carry out a certain activity，but first they have to speculate whether they can do it or not，whether they have the ability and confidence to carry out this behaviour(Bandura，1977).This process of speculation and estimation is actually the expression of self-efficacy.Therefore，human behaviour is not only affected by the expectation of results，but also influenced by the expectation of selfefficacy，which is the decisive factor of human behaviour.

Bandura created the concept of self-efficacy by distinguishing between efficacy expectations and result expectations(Bandura，1977).Result expectation，which belongs to the concept category of traditional expectation，is people’s conjecture of what kind of result will be caused by certain behaviour of their own.The efficacy expectation is the subjective judgment of the individual’s ability to perform a certain behaviour，that is，the prediction of their own behaviour ability.

The air writing training applies Bandura’s self-efficacy theory to students to develop a phased learning plan，combines the result expectation with the efficacy expectation.By breaking down the training plan into a number of small parts，students can intuitively anticipate the results of the completion of each learning process，and it also enables students to clearly feel their progress at each stage，thus establishing confidence in the writing of Chinese characters，and also providing a theoretical basis for students to overcome their fears in writing Chinese characters.

Based on the theory of self-efficacy，also according to the motivation of students in learning Chinese characters and their language habits as Chinese second language learners，three consecutive stages in the air writing training method are set for students.These three different stages are called the“drive cycle”，“incremental enhancement cycle”and“utility cycle”.In each cycle，specific goals are set for students，so that they can connect the pronunciation，shape and meaning of Chinese characters with various kinds of training in class while practicing，solve problems in writing Chinese characters and distinguish the meanings of characters.Through doing all this，students can really feel the progress they have made at each circle.

In the process of teaching，weekly word-writing tasks are broken down into a small number of parts.In each practice，characters are separated according to the radicals and their meanings.Then the air writing method is applied not only to enhance students’understanding of the structure of each character，but also extend students memory by breaking characters up into several meaningful components.While understanding the meanings of radicals in the process of air writing，it also lays a foundation for learning more difficult Chinese characters in the future.At the same time，it helps to build students’motivation and their confidence in writing Chinese characters，which will in turn make Chinese learning more fun and interesting.