A Study On "Learners' Controllable Factors" In College Spoken English Learning

The present study intends to identify Chinese college learners'spoken English learning motivations, beliefs and their practically employing learning strategies, then to investigate the relationships between these controllable variables and Chinese college learners'spoken English output ability.This thesis is divided into five chapters:Chapter One begins with a brief introduction of the overall purposes and reasons for writing this thesis.Chapter Two begins with the terminological issues on"learners'controllable factors"and some previously conducted researches related to these"controllable factors", namely researches on the role of learners'motivations, learning beliefs, and learning strategies in their second language learning process, especially in the spoken English learning process. Then the author gives an overview of the theoretical background of spoken English acquisition for this study, which includes some views on the spoken English output ability and the two hypotheses of spoken English acquisition——the Input and Output Hypotheses.Chapter Three and Chapter Four present an empirical study. The data are collected from 161 Chinese college students by means of questionnaires. And their latest spoken English ability test achievement scores serve as the reference of their spoken English output ability. On the basis of the research, the author tries to answer the following four questions:Research Question 1: What are Chinese college learners'existing spoken English learning motivations, beliefs, and strategies?Research Question 2: How Chinese college learners'learning beliefs are correlated to their learning strategies in their spoken English learning process? Research Question 3: How Chinese college learners'motivations are correlated to the other two"learners'controllable factors"(namely their learning beliefs and strategies) in the spoken English learning process?Research Question 4: What are the interrelationships of Chinese college students'"controllable factors"(namely, motivations, learning beliefs, learning strategies) and how can these"learners'controllable factors"predict their spoken English output ability?Chapter Five gives a summary of what have been discussed in the previous chapters, the significance and limitation of this study, and also some recommendations for Chinese spoken English teachers, learners and their future researches in those related fields.