Researching Beliefs About SLA: A Critical Review

Children’s beliefs about bilingualism and language use as expressed in child-adult conversations

“…In research with older (school)children, the informants' language learning beliefs have been the main realm of interest (see Barcelos 2003 for an overview). The informants' role is thus that of learner rather than language user.…”

The Relationship between Language Learning Strategies, Language Learning Beliefs, Motivation, and Proficiency: A Study of EFL Learners in Iran

“…Since the mid 1980s, learner beliefs have become a topic of research interest and have received an increasing amount of attention (Barcelos, 2003). Learner beliefs refer to "beliefs about the nature of language and language learning" (Barcelos, 2003, p. 8).…”

“…Students" description of language learning strategy use, for instance, was found to be consistent with their stated beliefs about language learning (Wenden, 1987). Horwitz"s system of beliefs about language learning, as reflected in the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI), which is the most widely used questionnaire for investigating learner beliefs (Barcelos, 2003) consists of the following five major areas: (a) beliefs about the difficulty of language learning, which concerns the general difficulty of learning a second language as well as perceptions of the difficulty of a specific target language; (b) foreign language aptitude, which concerns the existence of aptitude and opinions about the kind of individuals who possess it; (c) beliefs about the language learning process, which concerns student ideas about "what it means to learn a language and how to go about it" (Horwitz, 1999, p. 565); (d) beliefs about how to communicate; and (e) motivation and learner expectations (Horwitz, 1988(Horwitz, , 1999. The present study adopts this system and adapts specific items in the BALLI.…”

Teachers’ perceptions of the quality of the new Expressive Arts textbooks for Malawi primary schools

“…Teachers' perceptions influence teachers' practice, judgement and decision making (Barcelos 2003;Pederson 2003). Teachers play a key role in learning and teaching; therefore, it is believed that investigating teachers' perceptions will uncover salient shortcomings occurring in educational settings which will be invaluable to teachers' educational development.…”

“…Teachers play a key role in learning and teaching; therefore, it is believed that investigating teachers' perceptions will uncover salient shortcomings occurring in educational settings which will be invaluable to teachers' educational development. However, it has been noticed that there has been little explicit research focusing on teachers' perceptions of the quality of textbooks (Barcelos 2003).…”