Novice English teachers' beliefs about

the teaching-learning process of English as a

foreign language in public elementary schools.

Alejandro Sansores

Rubi Castillo

Introduction to the researchBackground:

‘’Assessing beliefs that language learners bring to the language classroom is important for both language instructors and

curriculum designers because

“beliefs are predispositions to action” (Rokeach, 1968, p. 113). Educational psychology supports the proposition of the

importance of beliefs that learners hold as a defining factor of their learning behavior’’. (As cited in Nikitina & Furuoka, 2006)

English language teachers in the need of the best method for teaching have come to develop through time a broad range of beliefs

about teaching the

language thanks to their own experiences and practice as teachers rather than their own education, as suggested by Tatto, (1998).

Rationale:

The purpose of this research project and the resulting thesis is to broaden the general knowledge about beliefs of Teaching and

learning English as a foreign language by learning and categorizing how primary school teachers have developed and applied these

very beliefs, whether due to their own assumptions, findings or by experience. With the goal of providing new information

regarding educational beliefs and some background as an aid in the creation of future, similar research.

Objective:

The aim of this research is to know about the different novice’s teachers beliefs about the teaching-learning process of English as

a foreign language with the goal of help building up significant knowledge that might help English teachers to be better prepared

and create meaningful background for any future research.

Statement of the problem:

There is a lack of research about Novice English teachers' beliefs about the teaching-learning processes of the English as a

foreign Language at primary schools in Mexico. In order to cover this lack this research attempts not only to identify the Novice

English teachers' beliefs, but also to find out how these beliefs influence the way they teach and their students' learning.

To know about these educational beliefs will be of great value for future research and Teachers who are in the need of

improving their teaching methods.

Significance of the study:

Actual research that seek the same goal than ours are scarce, even those conducted in a different country. For that reason, we

think that our research is very relevant no matter our own assumptions previously stated in the Rationale.

Literature ReviewBeliefs about learning English as a foreign Language

‘’Pintrich & DeGroot (1990) maintain that students who believe that their study is interesting and important are more actively engaged in the

learning process and more persevering in their academic work. In addition, instructors need to know their audience in order to arrange the

classroom procedure in the most effective way for learning&.

Beliefs about teaching English as a foreign Language

‘’It is generally accepted that teaching is greatly affected by the beliefs system of practitioners-teachers. Teachers’ beliefs influence their

consciousness, teaching attitude, teaching methods and teaching policies, and finally, learners’ development. Horwitz, (1987), also states rightly

that the information of teachers’ educational beliefs in language teaching/ learning process will influence, though indirectly, on forming effective

teaching methods and will bring about the improvement of learners’ language learning abilities.’’ Shinde & Karekatti, (2012, p. 69).

Relevant research

Martínez, (2005

Shinde & Karekatti, (2012)

William & Burden, (1997)

Liao, (2007)

Kern, (1995)

Reyes, M.R.; Murrieta, G. and Hernandez, E. (2009b)

MethodInformants of the research:

A total of 37 novice English teachers will be the informants of this study

All the informants' English proficiency level is advanced, measurable as C1 or TOEFL iBT 110-120 according to the MCER in Spanish, or CEFR

in English.

The informants' average age is between 23 and 26.

Instruments of the research:

The main instrument that will be used for this research is the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory Questionnaire, (Horwitz, 1987).

Likert scale, from number 1 (strongly agree) to number 5 (strongly disagree).

Semi-structured interviews.

Procedures will be stored by means of the SPSS, Statistical Package for Social Science,

Method

Procedures:

Firstly, the informants will be asked to answer the adapted BALLI (Horwitz, 1988) questionnaire by means of a Likert Scale.

Secondly, the teachers will be asked a few open questions about their beliefs about teaching and learning. Lastly, if some of the

informants gave ambiguous information in any way, those will be asked to provide feedback in a second interview.

We are going to write all the data in a computer base, scan all the questionnaires if it is necessary and store all the findings in a

software package used for statistical analysis named SPSS, Statistical Package for Social Science.

After having collected and all the data, the validation will be carried out by means of using the following techniques: ask the

subjects to verify the questionnaires and the transcriptions in order to confirm all the information and look for a researcher who

could provide a different analysis than the one already conducted.

Conclusion

Completing this project was really helpful for us as future teachers since we learned a lot about the different

beliefs other teachers have about education. It also helped us to understand how a thesis should be researched and

to be more organized about it. We are looking forward to develop the full thesis and we honestly hope that the

research help novice teachers to provide a better education for children.