An Empirical Study On The Correlation Between English Learning Beliefs,Meta-Cognitive Strategies Use And English Proficiency Of Senior High School Students

Nowadays,scholars’ vision about education has gradually shifted from the classroom to outside of the classroom.Not only the teaching factor in school but also other factors outside of the school are being taken into consideration.Learning beliefs have been proven to be widely influential in students’ learning since they have been introduced to China,and metacognitive strategies have also contributed greatly to students’ learning.In this thesis,based on learning beliefs theories and metacognitive strategies theories,the author conducted a research in Yunnan Province and employed senior high school students as samples to investigate the effects of learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies on their English proficiency.The specific research questions are: 1.What are the types of the English learning beliefs and English learning meta-cognitive strategies for the subjects? 2.The general situation of senior high school students’ English learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies use;3.The correlations between students’ learning beliefs,metacognitive strategies and English proficiency;4.The important predictors of learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies which affect the subjects’ English learning proficiency;5.The significant differences in English learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies use related to gender and grade variables.This research adopted a mixed design of quantitative questionnaire survey and qualitative interview.The participants are 343 students from Changning First Senior High School,Yunnan by convenience sampling,and the quantitative statistical data were analyzed by SPSS 26.0(Statistical Package for Social Sciences)with those programs such as Descriptive Statistics Analysis,Pearson Correlation Coefficient Analysis,Linear Stepwise Regression,Independent T test,One-way ANOVA employed to investigate the general situation of participants’ learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies use,the relationship between learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies use and English proficiency,and the significant differences in learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies use by different demographic variables.Finally,a semi-structural interview was used to gain further insight into the participants’ learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies use.Conclusions of this research are as following:1.The types of English learning beliefs are Nature of English learning,Difficulty of English learning,English learning aptitude and English learning motivation;the types of English learning meta-cognitive strategies are center your learning;arrange your learning and evaluate your learning.2.The senior high school students had a relatively strong English learning beliefs and their meta-cognitive strategies use was in a moderate level.3.English proficiency was significantly,positively and relatively strongly correlated with the factors of English learning aptitude and English learning motivation in English learning beliefs;English proficiency was significantly and positively and relatively strongly correlated with the three factors of meta-cognitive strategies,namely,center your learning,arrange your learning and evaluate your learning;the subjects’ English learning beliefs and meta-cognitive strategies were significantly and positively but weakly correlated mutually.4.English learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies which affect the subjects’ English learning proficiency were English learning motivation,difficulty of English learning in the learning beliefs and center your learning,evaluate your learning in the meta-cognitive strategies.5.There were significant differences in English learning beliefs and meta-cognitive strategies use in terms of gender and grades.In English learning beliefs,significant differences existed in belief English learning motivation in regard to male and female students;significant differences were spotted in the nature of belief English learning,English learning aptitude and difficulty of English learning related to different grades in senior high school.As for meta-cognitive strategies use,significant difference existed in strategies center your learning,arrange your learning and evaluate your learning in regard to male and female students;significant differences also were found in the strategies center your learning,arrange your learning and evaluate your learning in regard to different grades in senior high school.According to these above findings,this study is beneficial for English teachers to understand students’ English learning beliefs and metacognitive strategies use in general,and they can further conduct a special guidance based on students’ different aptitude and their specialty,and thus students’ English proficiency will be improved ultimately.