Correlation Study On Language Learning Beliefs, Strategies And Testing Performance Of College Students

Since the 1970s, more and more linguists and language teachers have discovered that teacher-centered method does not have much impact on students' language learning, and it is also impossible to apply the same method to different students. Besides, students are not satisfied with what they have been taught in an age when information and knowledge have grown so rapidly. Meanwhile, with the development of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, attention has been shifted from how-to-teach to how-to-learn, and research focus has been accordingly shifted from teaching methods to individual learners. Learner differences have become an important factor in second language acquisition.Among the learner differences, biological factors like sex and age are unchangeable as learners are born with them; whereas some other factors like language learning beliefs, language learning strategies, learning styles, motivation and personalities are developed in learners' later life, and many linguists and language teachers believe that they can be adjusted accordingly. Therefore, in recent years, many researches have been carried out to enable learners to achieve greater success in language learning.A survey involving college students of the same English level in ECUST was conducted with questionnaires based on SILL by Oxford and BALLI by Horwitz as well as the author's interview with students. Horwitz (1987) classified learners' beliefs about language learning into five categories:beliefs about foreign language aptitude, beliefs about the difficulty of language learning, beliefs about the nature of language learning, beliefs about learning and communication strategies and beliefs about motivation and expectation. As far as learning strategies are concerned, Oxford (1990) divided them into two types:direct strategies, which include cognitive strategies, memory strategies and compensation strategies, and indirect strategies, which include meta-cognitive strategies, social strategies and affective strategies.Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and independent sample T-test analysis are employed in the thesis to analyze the data collected and it has been found that the subjects' language learning beliefs are on a moderate level as a whole. Comparatively, compensation strategy, memory strategy, and meta-cognitive strategy are used with the highest frequency while cognitive strategy and social strategy the lowest frequency. Their beliefs about language learning are significantly correlated with the use of strategies. Obviously, there is a high correlation between students' English achievement and their beliefs about difficulty of language learning and communication strategies and between memory strategy, compensation strategy and social strategy. In addition, higher scores and lower scorers in the achievement tests are found to be significantly different from each other in their beliefs about language learning and in their use of strategies.