A Study Of Freshmen's Beliefs About Foreign Language Learning In Chinese Universities

With arrival of an epoch of knowledge-based economy, the capacities of lifelong-learning and learner autonomy have become the most basic requirements for 21^st's citizens. As a result, the global reform of education have been paying most attention to the shift from teacher-centered classroom to learner-centered approach, the highest goal of learning and teaching is to achieve autonomy. Then, how to reach the goal of being an autonomous learner? "One of the premises of autonomy is enhancing students' metacognition" (Mia Victori & Walter Lockhart, 1995). Meanwhile, with the rapid development of globalization, English, as an international language, is becoming more and more important. How to make individual learners learn English effectively and efficiently, and how to integrate English teaching with learners' such characteristics as their attitude, motivation, cognitive styles, learning beliefs becomes heated research topics for English language educators and researchers throughout the world. All in all, it is under such global social and educational contexts that the research focus of second language acquisition begins to shift from teaching to learning. Learning is no longer seen as mechanical stimulus-response course. Learning is creatively constructing and learners can intervene in their learning process consciously (Richard, 1990; Ellis, 1994). As a result, numerous studies have been conducted from learners' perspectives (Wen & Johnson, 1997). Researchers have discovered that learners' language learning beliefs take an important role in influencing learners' choices along the learning process, learners' proficiency and behavior, and learning outcomes.Since it is one indispensable component of metacognition and one important determinant of learners' behavior and learning outcomes, more and more researchers have been attracted to explore relationship between learners' LLB and other learning variables in the hope that we can understand how LLB are formed and what kinds of effects it exerts on the processes and outcomes of language learning. Nevertheless, comparatively speaking, only a small number of studies took Chinese students as their...