A Study On English Learning Beliefs Of Senior High School Students Under The Background Of New Curriculum Standard

The studies of learning beliefs are of great significance for promoting the foreign language learning and improving teaching quality.Since the 1970s,researchers have made abundant achievements in the study of learners’language learning beliefs.Most of the studies on language learning beliefs have taken college students as the research subjects,and focused on the correlation between learners’language learning beliefs and learning strategy,learning motivation and academic achievement,but few studies on the influencing factors of the shaping of language learning beliefs.In addition,Since the National English Curriculum Standard(NECS)was issued in 2018,no researchers have explored the English learning beliefs of senior high school students under the guidance of the new curriculum standard.Therefore,this paper adopted the method of combining quantitative research with qualitative research to investigate the English learning beliefs of Chinese senior high school students under the background of new curriculum standards.It aims to answer the following three research questions:1)Under the background of the new curriculum standard,what beliefs do the senior high school students hold in learning English?2)What is the correlation between senior high school students’English learning beliefs and their English achievements?3)What are the factors influencing senior high school students’English learning beliefs?In this study,the research subjects are 203 students from four classes in grade two of a senior high school in Ordos.Data were collected through questionnaires and interviews.The questionnaire in this study was based on Horwitz’s“Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory”(BALLI),and combined with the content of the NECS.The collected questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS 25.0.In addition,6 students and 2 English teachers were selected to conduct semi-structured interviews.The major findings are as follows:(1)under the background of the new curriculum standards,senior high school students hold relatively high level of beliefs in English learning(M=3.75).They have a highly positive attitude towards the beliefs about language learning strategies(M=4.16),and a relatively negative and one-sided attitude towards the beliefs about the difficulty of language learning(M=3.09).(2)Through Pearson correlation analysis,it was found that beliefs about the nature of language learning,language learning motivation and language learning strategies were positively correlated with English achievement(r=0.262,r=0.252,r=0.419),while the beliefs about the difficulty of language learning(r=-0.525)was negatively correlated with English achievement.Further regression analysis found that two dimensions of English learning beliefs had predictive effects on English performance(R~2=0.357).(3)Through the analysis of the interview data,it was found that the factors influencing the formation of senior high school students’English learning beliefs can be divided into external factors and internal factors.Specifically,external factors mainly include:educational background,social background,contextual factor and teachers factor;Internal factors mainly include:personal factor and affective factor.Finally,based on the results of the study,the author puts forward some suggestions for senior high school students to form a correct belief in English learning.