A Relationship Study Of Vocational English Majors' Learning Strategies, Beliefs And Motivation

Since the 1970s, research interest in second language acquisition has shifted from teachers'teaching to students'learning and an increasing number of studies have been undertaken from the students" perspective. These studies are mainly concerned with individual learner differences and the second language acquisition process. Although tremendous attention has been shifted to learner factors and considerable progress has been made in the area of language learning strategies, beliefs and motivation, the relationship study of language learning strategies, beliefs and motivation from the perspective of vocational English majors is still in its infancy.Vocational education has played an important role in China's educational system. However, most of the students are not quite good at English learning. Learners should not only learn the language but also be equipped with the skills to continue learning on their own in the future. Vocational college students are different in many aspects from college students in universities such as academic foundations, learning styles, personalities, and so on. However, there is scarcity of research focusing on vocational college students' English learning in our country. According to their low achievement in the National College Entrance Examination, it is obvious that most of the students in vocational colleges have low English foundations and proficiency levels although they are English majors. The study of the vocational college English majors'learning strategies, beliefs and motivation has theoretical and practical significance. It can help to improve vocational college learners'efficiency of English learning.This thesis intends to explore the relationship among language learning strategies, beliefs and motivation of vocational college English majors through a questionnaire survey. In the present study, the participants consist of 263 first-year English majors chosen from six parallel classes in Chongqing Education College. Data of this study was mainly collected through written questionnaires. The questionnaire was employed to get detailed information about students'learning strategy use, beliefs and motivations. The questionnaire was developed from Wen Qiufang's "Strategy Inventory for Language Learning". The advantage of Wen's classification is that it is easy for the students to understand as well as operate. SPSS 16.0 is used to analyze the obtained data.The specific research questions explored in the present study are listed below:(1) What are the language learning strategies employed by vocational English majors?(2) What are the language learning beliefs held by vocational English majors?(3) What are the language learning motivations held by vocational English majors?(4) What is the relationship among vocational English majors'language learning strategy employment, beliefs and motivation?The thesis is composed of five chapters:The chapter of Introduction deals with the research background, purposes and significance, and the overall structure of the present study. Chapter 2 is a general review of the research on language learning strategies, beliefs and motivation both home and abroad, presenting information about the definitions, classifications and characteristics. Chapter 2 establishes a sound theoretical foundation for this study. Chapter 3 elaborates on the research questions, the situations of the participants, instrument employed in this study, and the process of data collection and data analysis. Chapter 4 shows the major findings of data analysis and comes to a discussion about the relationship among language learning strategies, beliefs and motivation. Chapter 5 is conclusion, based on the review of the whole study, comprises some tentative suggestions proposed by the author, to English teachers and learners across China.This study provides a quantitative research of language learning strategies, beliefs and motivation of Chinese vocational English majors. The data collected from the questionnaire shows that the students generally have or believe in English language learning beliefs and possess learning motivations and strategies. It is found that the motivations, beliefs and strategies remarkably correlate to each other and the motivations and beliefs have mutual influence and predicative force in statistical sense.