The Degree Of Match Between Teacher's And Students' Beliefs About English Learning, And Its Correlation With Students' English Proficiency

Teachers and learners often hold diverging beliefs about how to best learn English. For example, many learners believe that it is necessary to have all their errors corrected, learning English is mostly a matter of learning a lot of grammar rules and new vocabulary words; many teachers disagree with such beliefs (Horwitz,1985,1987,1988; Kern,1995; Mantle-Bromley,1995).Students'beliefs are an important factor in their effort in learning a language (Mantle-Bromley,1995; Yang,1999), and teachers'beliefs are a significant factor in their teaching practice and classroom decision-making (Pajares,1992; Johnson,1994). Considering the vital roles that beliefs can play in the language class, this dissertation examines the inter-correlation among an English teacher's beliefs and her students' beliefs about English learning, and students'English proficiency.The stimulus for the current study is the findings of three previous studies. In 1996, Fang examined the relationship between a teacher's beliefs about and her students' conception of good writing by interviewing 15 fourth graders and their teacher. The research indicates that students whose conceptions are similar to their teacher's have a better chance of succeeding, but no concrete data is offered to confirm such finding. From 2008 to 2010, Yang Na and Gao Li in their master's theses studied the influence of 2008 English Strategy Training Course (ESTC) on the first year language majors'beliefs about English learning and metacognition in Southwest Petroleum University (SWPU). They both found that the course had changed students' beliefs and metacognition.The present study is undertaken to investigate the beliefs of the same students in the same ESTC as they were in the studies of Miss Yang and Miss Gao and the beliefs of the teacher in this course. It attempts to explore:1) What are the similarities and differences between the teacher's and her students' beliefs about English learning before the ESTC? 2) Whether the students' changed beliefs are closer to their teacher' beliefs after the ESTC? 3) Whether the beliefs of the students with higher English proficiency are closer to their teacher's beliefs than those of the students with lower English proficiency?Four data-gathering tools—uestionnaires, the students'TEM-4 scores, classroom observations, the author's journals and the students' reflective diaries—are used. The class was observed over one year. The questionnaire named Learners'Beliefs on English Language Learning was adapted from the widely used Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) invented by Horwitz (1987). The teacher answered the questionnaire once and the students answered the questionnaire before and after the ESTC. And statistical package SPSS 13.0 is employed to analyze the data. The students'TEM-4 scores are collected to categorize the high English proficiency students and low English proficiency students. The author's journal and students' reflective diaries are collected to offer qualitative support to the teacher's beliefs and the students'beliefs about English learning.The results show that:1) Before the ESTC, the teacher and her students shared similar beliefs about the Nature of English Learning and English Learning and Communication Strategies. They held different beliefs about Foreign Language Aptitude and Classroom Teaching for English Learning. Their beliefs about the Difficult of English Learning and the Motivations and Expectations were half match and half mismatch.2) After the ESTC, the students'changed beliefs partly get closer to their teacher's beliefs, partly stay away from their teacher's beliefs, and mostly turn neutral. That the students'beliefs have changed toward neutrality can be seen as a positive change, and is predicted to have the tendency to stand closer to the teacher's beliefs. Generally speaking, the students'beliefs tend to get closer to their teacher's beliefs after the ESTC.3) Results from comparing the degree of belief match between high English proficiency group vs. teacher and low English proficiency group vs. teacher indicate that high English proficiency students'beliefs are closer to their teacher's. Answers from high and low English proficiency students on several belief items suggest that there exists correlation between English learning beliefs and English proficiency, which further confirms Fang's 1996 finding that "those students whose conceptions are similar to their teachers'have a better chance of succeeding"Based on the results and discussions, the author recommends that teachers and students should examine their own and one another's beliefs about English learning and teaching so as to reduce the gaps between their beliefs, and that further studies should be conducted to explore why teachers'and students'beliefs diverge, and how these differences can be removed.