An Investigation On College Students' Class-Interactive Beliefs And Strategy Use

This study investigated 296 non-English majors'class-interactive learning beliefs and strategy use by using self-report questionnaire. It also examined how these beliefs and strategy use influenced their English class participation. The purpose of the study was to provide some useful information for dealing with students'unwillingness or reluctance to participate in oral interaction prevailing in current English class. The data were collected through three questionnaires: Beliefs about Classroom Interaction Inventory (BACII), Strategy Inventory for Classroom Interaction (SICI) and Motivations/Reasons for Classroom Interaction Survey. The collected data were analyzed by means of SPSS13.0.The findings show that, firstly, the students strongly believed that English class should be interactive and they had positive beliefs about interactive learning and communication strategies. However, they also held some negative beliefs about their interactive aptitude and about their classroom learning motivations and many of them showed lower self-confidence and self-efficacy in their English proficiency. Of the class-interactive strategy use, oral communication strategies and affective strategies were most frequently used, but only at medium level, followed by in-class active responding strategies, with other strategies generally not used indicating the students'lack of awareness of strategy use.Secondly, some kinds of class-interactive beliefs and strategy use were significantly correlated with each other. Of all the correlations, beliefs about classroom learning motivations had the strongest relationship with almost all kinds of strategy use. Beliefs about the difficulty of classroom interaction concerning students'self-efficacy were also significantly associated with all kinds of strategies. In addition, almost all categories of beliefs showed to have the highest relationships with affective strategies. All categories of beliefs were related to the usage of in-class active responding strategies. There existed a reciprocal relationship between students'class-interactive beliefs and strategy use.Thirdly, the differences were found between the active and inactive students in class-interactive beliefs and strategy use. The former group of students held stronger sense of self-efficacy in and integrated motivation for English class participation whereas the latter group presented lower self-confidence in and higher score-oriented motivation for classroom learning. Frequencies of usage of each kind of strategies showed almost the same in the ranking for the two groups, but the active students used all kinds of strategies more frequently than the inactive students suggesting that the difference between them relied on the extent and frequency of strategy use. Significant differences were also found in some personal background of the students such as the desire to improve listening skills and personality. The active students desired to improve both listening and speaking skills whereas the inactive students were inclined to improve oral English first. And more of the inactive students considered themselves to be introverts than their counterparts.Finally, among the class-interactive beliefs and strategies showing the differences between the two groups, beliefs about the difficulty of classroom interaction, in-class active responding strategies, social strategies and affective strategies significantly influenced students'interaction in English class. Considering oneself to be able to follow English teachers, seeking practice opportunities in class, taking risks, and encouraging oneself were ways to predict students'class involvement. In addition, the desire of improving both listening and speaking skills contributed to students'class participation while inversion was negatively associated with it. Almost all these factors were related to learners'affection. Therefore, it can be concluded that affection was the most important factor influencing learner's class interaction from the perspective of learners'beliefs and strategy use.