ROLE OF STUDENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ BELIEFS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AT FEDERAL COLLEGES OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

Beliefs play a vital role in shaping actions. They not only drive the actions but also help in identifying strategies to practice beliefs. English Language Learning beliefs and strategy use is a relatively unexplored area in Pakistani context. The aim of this study is to investigate Pakistani college students’ and teachers’ beliefs about English language learning, to explore English language learning strategies used by the students and preferred by the teachers and to find out relationship between beliefs and strategy use. 419 college students and 40 teachers participated in the study. A wide range of data collection tools were used, including four Likert-scale questionnaires, comprising different versions for teachers and students respectively, The Individual Background Questionnaire (IBQ), the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI), the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and Teachers Preferred Strategy Questionnaire (TPSQ). Apart from these questionnaires, other information gathering tools including Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), Open-ended Questions, Interviews and Classroom Observations were also used for collecting qualitative data with a view to imparting more reliability and objectivity to the data used for the study. In this regard, five focus group discussion sessions and 12 classroom observations were conducted. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 for quantitative date, while the software Nvivo 9 was used for qualitative data analysis. The results largely suggest convergence in teachers’ and students’ beliefs, yet they differ from each other in many respects. The data revealed that metacognitive strategies are most frequently used by Pakistani students, while social strategies are amongst those least preferred. Gender as well as exposure to English is among significant factors in determining the use of these strategies. The study also showed that teachers preferred certain strategies over the others. Most importantly, the study testified that there existed a significant association between beliefs and strategy use. The study has important implications for language teaching, teacher training, syllabus reformation and the examination system. The study recommends that curriculum, teacher training programs and examination system prevalent in colleges of Pakistan be revised keeping in view teachers’ and students’ beliefs towards learning of English in order to improve English language teaching/learning situation in the country.