The Development and Validation of Language Learner Beliefs Scale in the Iranian EFL Context

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Parviz Birjandi ¹ , Mojtaba Mohammadi ²

1 - Department of Foreign Language, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of Foreign Language, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2013-03-10 Accepted : 2013-10-15 Published : 2014-02-01

Keywords: Validation, Learner belief, English language learning, mediatory belief, self-belief, attributive belief, traditional belief, epistemological belief,

Abstract :

Unlike teacher beliefs, there has been a dearth of study regarding EFL learner beliefs. The reason can be that Horwitz (1987) and the existing literature has predominantly been in an ESL context. The present study reports the development and validation of a scale to measure the learner beliefs about language learning in Iranian EFL contexts. Using a combination of verbal creativity method, interview-based method, and previously-established questionnaires to draw up the item pool for the scale, a 45-item scale was finally developed. It was administered to 319 randomly-selected students studying English at Islamic Azad University Roudehen Branch. The internal consistency was calculated to be 0.78 through Cronbach's Alpha Formula. The results of factor analysis yielded five factors with 33 items: mediatory beliefs, self-beliefs, attributive beliefs, traditional beliefs, and epistemological beliefs. Results indicated that self-belief among others is the strongest dimension of beliefs among Iranian undergraduate students.