The Influence Of English Teacher Beliefs On Students’ Enlish Learning

Teachers play a very important role in the process of teaching. The focus ofstudies of teacher professional development has gradually made their transition fromthe explicit teaching behaviors to the implicit thoughts and cognition. Teacher beliefshave become a critical link in the studies of teacher education and relevant studies byscholars home and abroad have aroused people’s great interest. Studies have shownthat teacher beliefs are closely connected with teaching behaviors and students’learning is directly influenced by teachers’ behaviors. Teacher beliefs influencestudents’ learning. Besides, English is a major subject in basic education, and juniorschool English learning is crucial to the later stage in high schools, universities aswell as to lifelong personal development It’s important to study the influences ofteacher beliefs of junior school English teachers on students’ English learning, whichhelps teachers to improve their belief systems, teaching methodology and teachingbehaviors.The study mainly adopts the qualitative method to investigate the influences ofjunior school English teacher beliefs on students’ English learning. The author firstanalyzes the current situations of the six English teachers’ beliefs from Xuhui HighSchool. Then, by interviewing two of the teachers, the author gets to know about theirsub-beliefs. Meanwhile，two questionnaires arranged at two different periods arecarried out to check the learning situations of the students rfom two classes taught byone of the teachers in the interview. Finally, through the analyses of teacherquestionnaire, student questionnaires, teacher interviews and classroom observation,the author further examines the influences of teacher beliefs on students’ Englishlearning and whether the beliefs are congruent with the teaching behaviors.The study draws the following conclusions: first, the teacher beliefs influencestudents，English in a positive way； second, the teacher beliefs of junior schoolEnglish teachers are generally congruent with their teaching behaviors, albeit somemismatches sometimes; third, the negative factors causing the mismatches range fromstudents’ poor English learning basis, the age characteristics of lower grades junior students, national English tests policies and the remote school location. So to speak,English teachers must fully realize the influences of their beliefs on students’ learning,be alert to potential negative factors and try their best to eliminate them. Junior schoolEnglish teachers need to communicate more with colleagues about teacher beliefs andat the same time more with students in order to know better about what is in the kids’mind. Also，they should introspect their belief systems from time to time and updatethem if necessary.