Examining beliefs about language learning in relation to perceived linguistic self-confidence: learners of Korean as a foreign language in Australia

Abstract

This study investigated the language learning beliefs of students of Korean as a foreign language (KFL) in Australia. 156 students enrolled in Korean courses at a large public university in Australia completed the Beliefs About Language Learning Instrument, or BALLI (Horwitz, 1987, 1988) and items for Perceived Linguistic Self-confidence or PLS (Pyun, Kim, Cho, and Lee, 2014) in order to examine their language learning beliefs in relation to their level of PLS. For the data analysis, the KFL students were divided into three groups: High PLS group, Mid PLS group, and Low PLS group. Overall, the KFL students were neutral (total M = 3.33, SD = .27) on the statements of the BALLI, but significant differences were found among the groups in the total mean score of BALLI and the Motivation and Expectation (ME) category of the BALLI. Furthermore, the students' beliefs were found to reflect the features of good language learners, such as being open to the possibility of learning a foreign language, high expectation of learning to speak the Korean language very well, acknowledging the importance of practice, and high motivation. Among the 34 items, 10 items showed significant differences among the three groups, and generally, higher PLS students tended to be more positive than lower PLS students. Furthermore, small but significantly positive correlations were seen between the students' overall mean BALLI scores and their levels of PLS. The scores for the ME category also showed a significantly positive correlation with the students' PLS levels. Thus, those KFL students who had higher levels of PLS tended to agree more often with the BALLI statements, especially with those in the ME category, than did students with lower levels of PLS.