Research On The Correlation Between English Major Freshmen's Beliefs And Their Classroom Behaviors

Since the 1970 s,as the focus of teaching has moved from teachers to students,the focus of teaching research has gradually shifted from the study of the teaching process and its influencing factors to the study of students' learning process and its influencing factors.Scholars abroad and at home have done a lot of researches on learner's beliefs and classroom behaviors,but there are few researches on the relationship between the two aspects.Therefore,this thesis attempts to explore the characteristics of English major freshmen in English learning beliefs and their classroom behaviors,and conduct a correlation analysis of the two factors in order to provide some suggestions for teachers and learners.In this study,an empirical research was conducted to investigate English major freshmen in a university in Xi'an.The research includes questionnaire surveys and later interviews.The questionnaire consists of two parts: the English Learning Beliefs Questionnaire and the English Classroom Behaviors Questionnaire.The first one was modified based on the belief system developed by Horwitz(1988).It contains five dimensions: difficulty of language learning,language learning aptitude,the nature of language learning,learning and communication strategies,as well as motivations and expectations.And the English Classroom Behaviors Questionnaire is based on the classroom behaviors questionnaire designed by Hayes(1992).It includes verbal participation,learning orientation,dominating others,support-seeking,self-disclosure,self-assurance,and sociality.This study aims at answering the following three questions:(1)What is the overall situation of English major freshmen's beliefs about English learning?(2)What is the overall situation of English major freshmen's classroom behaviors?(3)Is there any correlation between learner's beliefs and English classroom behaviors of English major freshmen? And if relevant,how are they related?With the analysis of the collected data through SPSS 20.0,the results show that:(1)English learning beliefs of English major freshmen stay at a medium level,among which the beliefs about learning and communication strategies rank the top,and the beliefs about language learning aptitude are the lowest;(2)English major freshmen's classroom behaviors are also at a medium level,with the highest level of sociality and the lowest level of dominating others;(3)English major freshmen's beliefs are irrelevant to the aspects of dominating others and self-disclosure in their classroom behaviors.And there was a significant positive correlation between students' beliefs about English learning with classroom behaviors in the other five dimensions.Finally,based on the analysis results above,the paper makes several suggestions for teachers and students: Teachers should strive to build an active and interactive classroom atmosphere,and create more opportunities for students' collaborative learning in class;students should change some classroom learning concepts and participate more actively in the classroom.