Professional paper
THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNERS’ BELIEFS IN LEARNING AND TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Danijela Šegedin
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split
Mirjana Semren
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split
Abstract
This paper describes learners’ beliefs about foreign language learning
and teaching. The introduction discusses various definitions of learner
beliefs and conflicting attitudes of some authors in this regard. The second
part of the paper is a description of a research covering 120 elementary
school students who have been learning English as their second
language. BALLI questionnaire (Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory)
was used to collect the data. Learner beliefs about foreign language
aptitude, the nature and difficulty of language learning, learning and
communication strategies and motivation are analyzed and interpreted
in the light of practical experience in the classroom. The implications
of these findings for EFL teaching are discussed in the final part of the
paper.
Keywords
Learner beliefs; language learning; elementary school learners; BALLI questionnaire
Hrčak ID:
228206
URI
Publication date:
11.12.2013.
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