In this study, we investigated the relationship between the English proficiency levels of students ofEnglish as a foreign language (EFL) IntroductionStudent attitudes toward the culture of a target language greatly affect their proficiency level, and in turn, students are greatly influenced by this success. Typically, the attitudes of students who demonstrate positive attitudes are reinforced, whereas students who demonstrate negative attitudes may feel stress because of their lack of success. Positive attitudes may be both the cause and the result of learning success. However, in certain cases, students who possess positive attitudes when they begin learning may experience inadequate learning opportunities or environments, fail to progress at the expected rate, or develop negativity toward their target language. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between the attitudes and proficiency levels of Taiwanese students of English as a foreign language (EFL) and examined this correlation based on personal, social, educational, family, and ethnic perspectives. 265Published by SCHOLINK CO., LTD
In Taiwan, arts students spend most of their time developing their professions, such as musical instruments, acting, dancing, and painting. With the increasing importance of English in this global village and every Taiwanese university has set English capability as one of the graduation requirements, arts students must be aware that they need to acquire a good facility with English. This study investigated the English learning attitudes of Taiwanese university students majoring in the arts such as Fine Arts, Motion Pictures, Applied Drama & Theatre, Music, and Dance. A questionnaire consisted of two parts: part one focused on basic information and relevant English activities and part two covered English learning attitudes. The results show students spent about 10.40 hours per week doing English related activities and they realized the importance of learning English with a mean score of 93.92. They were also aware of the fact that English would help them greatly in the future, and good English would be useful for their careers after graduation. However, they did not like to raise their hands and asked teacher questions in the classes. They did not feel confident to speak English in front of their teachers and classmates.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between arts students' English proficiency level and their self-efficacy. Many studies have proved that self-efficacy is a significant predictor of learning and achievement (Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991;Pajares, 1996Pajares, , 1997Schunk & Pajares, 2005) IntroductionSelf-efficacy, the belief that one can complete a specific learning task effectively, is of vital importance for students studying English as a foreign language. Teachers are often bewildered by how and why some students are eager to learn and willing to tackle new challenges while others seem uninterested or unmotivated no matter how hard teachers try. Why do some students demonstrate high levels of confidence in their abilities, while others seem uncertain of themselves? Another piece of the learning puzzle for teachers is how students believe self-efficacy influences the ways in which they approach the learning task. Self-efficacy plays a key role in the learning process by either helping or hindering the learner's progress (Bandura, 1984). The beliefs learners hold about their ability to learn English can regulate the ways in which they approach the learning task as well as how they respond in EFL classroom settings. English proficiency is one of the requirements for being able to graduate from universities in Taiwan. It is a task that arts students have to tackle. They cannot choose to give it up. What do students think about this and do they believe that they are capable of learning English? Why are these arts students so confident in their majors or professions but not in their ability to learn English? As Siegle (2000) indicated, self-efficacy is specific to the task being attempted. This study inquired about arts students' beliefs about learning English at different English proficiency levels by investigating the aspects of cognitive, affective, and behavioral. While there are ample reasons to view EFL students' English self-efficacy as powerful enough of an indicator to predict EFL performance, it seems that this approach has not received enough attention for arts students. Therefore, this study was designed with the goal of sensitizing Taiwanese teachers, allowing them to understand their students' affective variables and beliefs about themselves and the effect these factors may exert on their performance in learning English.
This study investigated the self-regulatory behaviors of arts students, namely memory strategy, goal-setting, self-evaluation, seeking assistance, environmental structuring, learning responsibility, and planning and organizing. We also explored approaches to learning, including deep approach (DA) and surface approach (SA), in a comparison between students' professional training and English learning. The participants consisted of 344 arts majors. The Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire and the Revised Learning Process Questionnaire were adopted to examine students' self-regulatory behaviors and their approaches to learning. The results show that a positive and significant correlation was found in students' self-regulatory behaviors between professional training and English learning. The results indicated that increases in using self-regulatory behaviors in professional training were associated with increases in applying self-regulatory behaviors in learning English. Seeking assistance, self-evaluation, and planning and organizing were significant predictors for learning English. In addition, arts students used the deep approach more often than the surface approach in both their professional training and English learning. A positive correlation was found in DA, whereas a negative correlation was shown in SA between students' self-regulatory behaviors and their approaches to learning. Students with high self-regulation adopted a deep approach, and they applied the surface approach less in professional training and English learning. In addition, a SEM model confirmed that DA had a positive influence; however, SA had a negative influence on self-regulatory behaviors.
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