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Relationship between English Learning Beliefs and Use of Learning Strategies: A Study of Chinese College Students’ English Leaerning

Author: WangHongMei
Tutor: WangMaoJin
School: Shaanxi Normal University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: English learning beliefs English learning strategies English achievements
CLC: H319
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2005
Downloads: 334
Quote: 1
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Abstract


Since 1970s, great changes have taken place in second language acquisition (SLA) research. The emphasis of language teaching and learning has changed. More and more linguists and researchers are becoming more interested in the study of learning process than the learning product, in the behavior of learners than that of teachers (Chen, 1990). So corresponding to the shift in the field of SLA, language learning beliefs and language learning strategies have become heatedly discussed topics in recent years. It is suggested that learners’ beliefs about language learning and strategy use have a profound influence on their language learning behaviors and achievements. Hence, this study was intended to explore these two aspects in the hope of providing practical implications to English learning and teaching in China.This study was to report on a survey of learning beliefs held by a group of Chinese EFL learners and their strategy use when learning English with the aims in demonstrating the commonly held learning beliefs and common learning strategies employed by the subjects and investigating the relationship between the learners’ beliefs, the use of learning strategies and the achievements of the subjects measured by CET-4.A total of 234 non-English majors from Shaanxi Normal University who were in their third year of college study participated in the study. They were asked to complete an English learning questionnaire consisting of three parts: the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) adapted from Horwitz (1987), the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) adapted from Oxford (1990) and a personal background information part of the survey. In addition, eight of the participants were further interviewed. The data were then analyzed with SPSS (11.0). The main findings are as follows:1. The students displayed five types of beliefs in their English learning: foreign language aptitude (FLA), the difficulty of language learning (DLL), the nature oflanguage learning (NLL), learning and communication strategies (LCS), learner motivation and expectations (LME), which have been proposed and discussed by language educators and researchers in the last two decades. They strongly believed in three types of beliefs about English learning: learning and communication strategies, the nature of language learning and foreign language aptitude. The students strongly holding those beliefs thought that strategy use was very important to English learning and they also believed in foreign language aptitude, but, on the other hand, they thought they were able to learn English well. Besides the five types of beliefs mentioned above, another type - mother tongue-reliance (MTR) did exist in the students, even though this type of beliefs was not very strong (M= 2.537).2. Six types of learning strategies were employed by the Chinese non-English majors in their English learning: memory (M = 2.904), cognitive (M = 2.880), compensation (M= 3.234), metacognitive (M= 2.902), affective (M= 2.880) and social (M= 2.830) strategies. But they often used compensation strategies only.3. The following results were derived from the correlation and multiple regression analyses: (1) Foreign language aptitude beliefs were significantly and positively correlated with cognitive and affective strategies, and could only predict significantly the variance of the students’ use of the cognitive strategies; (2) The beliefs of difficulty of language learning were significantly and positively correlated with compensation and metacognitive strategies, and could predict significantly the variance of the students’ use of the metacognitive strategies only; (3) The beliefs of nature of language learning were significantly and positively correlated with compensation strategies, but they were the negative predictor of two types of strategies: memory and metacognitive strategies; (4) The belief category of learning and communication strategies was significantly and positively correlated with memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective and social strat

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CLC: > Language, writing > FOREIGN > English > Language teaching
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