A Study Of Freshmen's Beliefs About Foreign Language Learning In A Vocational College Of Jiangxi Province

Beliefs about language learning are considered to be very important in our learning process, because they have potential to affect the learning behavior. A number of researchers have conducted investigations on learner beliefs, and found that learners'beliefs were related to learner autonomy, learning proficiency, learning anxiety. Learner's beliefs would also affect learners'motivation and strategies for language learning.The current study was based on the relevant studies on language learning beliefs both at home and aboard. Its aim was to explore the freshmen's beliefs about foreign language learning in vocational college, and find out the difference between females and males. It also explored the difference between high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students. 140 students in Blue Sky Vocational Institute took part in this study, of whom 72 females and 68 males. They were divided into different groups according to the English scores in college entrance exam. A slightly modified version of BALLI (Horwitz, 1986) was used to obtain data for answering the research questions, and a face-to-face open-ended interview was conducted to provide the findings to supplement the quantitative data. All the data were entered into SPSS, and they were statistically analyzed.A number of findings were revealed in this study. First, most students regarded English as a language of medium difficulty and thought learning English would cost a long time. More than half of them believed that reading and writing were easier than listening and speaking. Most learners realized the importance of culture and held strong motivation and a high expectation in foreign language learning. Secondly, in terms of the differences in language learning beliefs between male and female students, female students felt more optimistic toward the difficulty of English. And female students held more positive attitude towards communication strategy and ambiguity tolerance than the male students.Thirdly, high-proficiency students showed more self-confidence in language learning. They generally enjoyed practicing English so it was easier to speak than to understand English for them. They held strong motivation and made use of a variety of learning strategies to facilitate the process of language learning. However, low-proficiency students attached great importance to the accuracy. This may hinder their progress in speaking competence.On the basis of these findings, the thesis provided several pedagogical implications for English teaching and learning. First, teachers should enrich themselves in pedagogical theory and practice. They should follow the advanced learning theory and practice in language learning, and constantly modernize their own teaching perceptions and ideas. Secondly, teachers should guide their students to hold scientific and positive beliefs about language learning. Thirdly, teachers should provide students with some useful learning strategies, enabling them to set up some new and positive beliefs for language learning.