Abstract
With the advent of learner-centered approaches to second or foreign language teaching, the research on learners’ beliefs or what learners bring into the classroom in terms of their prior knowledge and experiences, their expectations, and their attitudes towards different aspects of language learning has gained momentum. Learners may, for example, develop core beliefs about language learning that undergo change or otherwise resist change when moving to a new learning context. This study examines overseas Iranian undergraduate students’ (n = 160) beliefs about language learning in an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) context and investigates the impact of the old and new learning environments on shaping or affecting these beliefs. The data form a survey and a semi-structured interview revealed that the students’ previous learning experiences and the socio-political factors of the old learning context affected the shaping of the trajectory of their belief development. The results also suggested that the new learning environment hardly affected the students’ core beliefs about language learning and in some cases even consolidated them. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main findings and offers several implications for further research and practice.
Highlights
With the growth of learner-centered approaches in second or foreign language teaching, researchers have focused on investigating learners’ factors such as their beliefs about language learning in order to find out how belief matches or mismatches between teachers and learners could affect learners’ participation in and contribution to their learning
The results indicated that the educational system and policies, as well as the socio-political and socio-economic forces of the previous learning environment seemed to have shaped students’ core beliefs, which remained, to a large extent, unchanged or consolidated under the influence of the new context
The results of this study indicated that learning context could function as one of the strongest variables in language learning
Summary
With the growth of learner-centered approaches in second or foreign language teaching, researchers have focused on investigating learners’ factors such as their beliefs about language learning in order to find out how belief matches or mismatches between teachers and learners could affect learners’ participation in and contribution to their learning. Many researchers have studied the debilitative and facilitative impacts of learners’ beliefs on their success or achievement in language learning (Barcelos, 2003; Barcelos & Kalaja, 2011; Horwitz, 1999). These beliefs were associated with learners’ meta-cognitive knowledge and their preferences for language learning strategies (Horwitz, 1987, 1988; Wenden, 1986, 1987). Horwitz (1999) reiterated that insights from learners’ beliefs might be useful to educators and language teachers to understand how different learners approach language learning
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