The Study Of Language Learning Beliefs And Strategies Of Non-English Major Students

The field of language teaching and learning has been in a constant state of motion over the last twenty years. The main change has been a shift of focus onto the language learner. In recent years, it has become axiomatic to view the language learner as an active participant in language learning activities. Based on the self-efficacy theory and expectancy-value theory, the thesis, from the educational and psychological point of view, explores EFL college students' language learning beliefs and strategies in the Chinese context. The subjects under study involve 106 non-English majors from Hohai University at its Changzhou Campus. The instrument for the research is two questionnaires that mainly investigate the learners" beliefs and their learning strategies.Researches abroad have demonstrated in the following aspects. The strategies in learning and the effective practice can influence the outcome of second or foreign language learning. The good learning strategies will be helpful to the improvement of the students" language competence. Beliefs play a core role in human behavior, and beliefs about language learning may influence or determine a learner's attitude, motivation or behavior. The study on this problem has its theoretical and practical significance. 1) Further explaining the specific characteristics of a student's learning: 2) Helping people further understand learning principles; 4) Providing theoretical basis for explaining teaching and learning problems; 5) Providing the new scientific question for the research on the teaching theory; 6) And, most important of all. offering a new way in thinking how to improve teaching quality and develop learning competence. Practically speaking, its significance is to cultivate students' intelligence, to improve their learning efficiency, to develop their learning competence, and to solve the problem of "teaching students how to learn".Overall, as suggested in the study, the students had a strong sense of self-efficacy about learning English and most of them were apt to attach importance to management beliefs. The majority of students realized the importance of extensive exposure to English material. Among all the belief categories, they preferred functional practice beliefs the most with the management beliefs in the second place. In terms of learning strategies, students used compensation strategies the most frequent with metacognitive strategies as second and social strategies ranked the lowest.Findings of the present study also indicated that the different beliefs and strategies were emphasized for the male and female students, students of arts and science and engineering. It was indicated in the study that male students tended to depend more on mother tongue in English learning and they also used more frequently memory strategies, cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies. In addition, students" beliefs about functional practice and about self-efficacy were also different for students of arts and students of science and engineering. Students of arts preferred the two categories of belief than those of science while students who major in science and engineering more frequently used metacognitive strategies than those majoring in arts.The thesis suggests that foreign language instruction and proper strategy activities should be paid more attention to and should be attended to students' beliefs about foreign language learning. By encouraging appropriate beliefs, teachers may enhance effective strategies in language learning and, therefore, further contribute to students" continuing motivation to learn a foreign language, thus to promote their English skills from all aspects.