Exploring Belief, Expectation and Behaviour in Learning A Foreign Language

Abstract

There are many reasons that motivates people to learn a new language. Some people learn a language for practical reasons. Some just love the language and its people. Motivation to learn a language is the pushing factor for the learners to succeed. This motivation sometime becomes the drive for the learners participate in the learning process. This then reduces their fear of learning the language. This study is therefore done to investigate the influence of fear on the learning if a foreign language. This study used the classic theory of self-fulling prophecy by Merton (1948) as the base. The three factors in selffulfilling prophecies ( beliefs, expectations and behaviour) are scaffolded onto the three constructs of fear of foreign language learning to form the main variables of the study. 100 participants were purposely chosen. The survey adapted from Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986). Apart from the demographic profile in Section A., there are 3 other sections. Section B has 11 items on beliefs, section 7 has 10 items on expectation and section D has 15 items on behaviour. Findings showed that learners beliefs, expectations and behaviour form the self-fulling prophecy in the learning of a foreign language. Learners beliefs such as being frightened and not being able to understand the teacher made them nervous of the learning activity. Next, the nervousness, is making them worry if they are unable to answer questions from the language teacher. Finally their behaviour is their justification for what they belief in themselves and how they expect their outcome of the learning to be. The findings in this study add to the existing theoretical framework on motivations to learn foreign languages.