AN INVESTIGATION OF CHINESE EFL LEARNERS’ SELF-EFFICACY, ENGLISH READING BELIEFS AND STRATEGIES

Based on the interviews with four Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners at middle school, the phenomenological study investigated these four high-level six-graders’ implicit and explicit beliefs on English reading and their strategies used in reading comprehension. Findings showed these high-level interviewees shared the same understanding on English reading, as they all regarded English as a way to decode and learn new information; all the students thought cloze was the most difficult part in reading; three students used test score as the only criterion to judge a good reader and defined a good reader as someone who succeeded in the reading tests; all the students in the study used the strategy of making inferences when they came to some new words in the text. Discussion centered around the effects of test-based instruction on these young Chinese EFL learners and the curriculum design in the transitional period between primary school and middle school.