FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING BELIEFS: WITHIN THE FRAME OF IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION

Human learning is a complicated and dynamic process, and it gets cultivated through students’ own mental lives since their perceptions as regards learning makes this process more meaningful. As Jarvis (2006) posits, so as to get into adults’ minds it is of necessity for them to depict their own mental functioning. There seems no other way to comprehend it. Therefore, eliciting learners’ mental images sheds light into their personal identities, which give shape to their learning because each educational context has its own variables and each student possess individual features. Student placed in the centre in new educational trends can take more sound and autonomous steps in their learning process through their clearly-constructed identities. Thus, this study dwells upon the EFL students’ beliefs regarding language learning and their identity construction. The study investigated student beliefs in terms of analytic and experiential learning, and self-efficacy/confidence. 104 EFL students from different departments participated in the study. They were administered a beliefs questionnaire, and then 10 randomly selected students were interviewed in terms of their language identity. The study results indicated that students have inclination to learn the target language through practice, and they depict themselves as a language learner who does not exert so much effort to learn English. The study suggests that students need to know themselves better as a language learner, and develop clearer and sounder identities as regards the foreign language.