ELT Students’ Language Learning Beliefs and the Correlation to English Proficiency

Abstract

There are various factors affecting an English learner to be able to learn English successfully. These factors may influence one’s learning pace and difficulties. One factor that is often referred to in many studies is the learner’s belief. The diverse beliefs of English learners are often said to be an influential factor to their language achievement. Based on this notion, this paper makes an effort to prove the correlation between the students’ language beliefs and achievement. This study focuses on students of English Language Teaching (ELT) as the participants. The ELT students’ beliefs are concluded from the questionnaire adapted from Horwitz’s Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI). Then, using the quantitative research approach, the results from the questionnaires are correlated to the students’ score of English proficiency test using Pearson correlation with SPSS 26. In the end, the result of the study shows positive beliefs by the ELT students. However, its correlation to language proficiency is not significant.