A Study On The Relationship Between Learners' Beliefs And Strategies In The Self-Regulated Learning

Based on the self-efficacy theory and expectancy-value theory, the thesis, from the educational and psychological point of view, explores the relationship between EFL college students' beliefs about language learning and their use of learning strategies in the self-regulated learning in the Chinese context. The subjects under study involve 262 non-English majors from Lanzhou University, Northwest Normal University and Gansu University of Technology. The instrument for the research is the English Study Questionnaire investigating mainly on language learning beliefs and strategies. The thesis consists of six parts: Introduction; Literature Review; Theoretical Foundations; The Study; Discussion and Conclusions.Researches abroad have demonstrated that: The use of learning strategies can influence the outcome of second or foreign language learning; The good learning strategies will be helpful to the improvement of the students' language competence; Beliefs play a core role in human behavior, beliefs about language learning may influence or determine a learner's attitude, motivation or behavior; Self-regulated learning is closely related to students' academic achievement, it plays a very important role in the overall learning development. However, at present, foreign language teaching and research in China is less involved in the empirical content related to these aspects. The thesis thinks that the research fruits in other fields are also capable of explaining foreign language learning. The significance of the present study is, theoretically speaking, to scientifically reveal the advanced psychological activities of the students, to make us realize the nature, structure and developing principles of the students' language learning competence from a new and dynamic angle, to confirm the important role of non-intelligent elements in learning activities, and to provide a scientific basis for perfecting the existing theories of foreign languages learning; practically speaking, its significance is to cultivate students' intelligence, to give play to their learningautonomy and self-awareness, to improve their learning efficiency, to develop their learning competence, and to solve the problem of "teaching students how to learn". Findings of the study indicate: (1) English learners' self-efficacy and expectation beliefs correlate positively and strongly with all dimensions of learning strategies; Students' beliefs about the perceived value and nature of spoken English correlate positively and strongly with metacognitive strategies, formal oral-practice strategies and social strategies; (2) All categories of strategies have a significant correlation with one another. Both functional practice strategies and metacognitive strategies have a strong, positive and significant correlation with other learning strategies. The two kinds of strategies play a very important role in the whole process of language learning, and support the model of self-regulated learning; (3) Statistically significant gender-difference in all categories is only evident for strategy choice―social strategies, female students use these strategies more frequently than male ones. (4) University major, including arts, science and engineering, makes a highly significant difference in the beliefs about perceived value and nature of spoken English, functional practice strategies, cognitive-memory strategies and formal oral-practice strategies. After the analysis of the results, the study holds that the relationship between beliefs about language learning and use of learning strategies should be viewed as cyclical and mutually influential rather than uni-directional. Self-efficacy beliefs and beliefs about perceived value and nature of spoken language, as the most important components of motivational beliefs, play a dominant role in the choice of students' learning strategies. Similarly, students with the help of effective and appropriate use of learning strategies can be real autonomous learners in the self-regulated learning, so that it can con...