Non-English Majors' English Learning Beliefs: A Survey Study

Promoting learner autonomy together with delivering knowledge has been widely acknowledged as essential in educational profession. To achieve this goal, Wenden suggests that teachers should try to gain an understanding of their learners' beliefs about language learning. Rubin more explicitly states the importance of studying students' beliefs by pointing out the fact that beliefs may affect strategy choice. Ellis directly illustrates the interrelationship between beliefs, strategies and learning outcome. Therefore, investigating learner beliefs is significant for efficient instructions on autonomous learning.What are Chinese non-English majors' beliefs in learning English, then? What is the relationship between their beliefs and English achievement? Drawing upon the concept of metacognitive knowledge in contemporary cognitive psychology, the author classifies English learning beliefs into three categories, i.e. person-related beliefs, task-related beliefs and strategy-related beliefs. To answer the research questions, this study employed a survey design to examine the English-learning beliefs of 222 non-English majors of the third year who were randomly chosen from a university in East China. All the subjects have taken CET-4, which is an authoritative achievement test with high validity and reliability. Altogether 178 valid questionnaires were collected and input for analysis with the help of SPSS 13.0. The modes, means and standard deviations of the subjects' responses to the questionnaire items are obtained to show the extent to which the subjects agree or disagree to the statements in the questionnaires. Then, correlation analysis was administered to indicate the relationship between the subjects' English learning beliefs and their CET-4 scores.The major findings are as follows: First, as cognitive agents in learning English, the subjects do not have very positive, if not negative, self-image concerning their language aptitude and such beliefs correlate with their English achievement; second, as to the task in learning English, the subjects attach much importance to vocabulary but at the same time they have realized the acquisition of language skills doesn't follow a good command of language knowledge; third, some of the subjects' strategy-related beliefs are inconsistent with their behaviors.Three main pedagogical implications for college English instructors can be drawn from this survey study to promote learner autonomy: First, teachers should invest more efforts in training learners' English language skills; second, teachers need to help narrow the gap between the learners' beliefs and behaviors; finally, teachers should give more positive feedback to their learners to enhance their perception of self-efficacy.