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Volume 7 Number 1, Spring 2010, Pages 1-393   


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"Just Make the Thing Understood"- Transformation of Migrant Learners' Beliefs about Learning

    Sng Bee Bee and Anil Pathak


Currently, there is increasing recognition of the fact that the beliefs individuals hold are the best indicators of the decisions they make during the course of everyday life (Bandura, 1986). Substantial research regarding language learners' explicit and implicit beliefs has been conducted in diverse language teaching environments. The present research was undertaken to understand the learning beliefs of PRC learners studying for a Nursing diploma course in Singapore. Our aim was to use a biographical approach to understand learner beliefs and examine the transformation of these beliefs as the learners undergo changes in their learning environment. In analyzing the biographies of these learners, we also tried to establish a connection between two kinds of change: change in the learning environment and change in the learning beliefs. In this study, students in their first and second years of a nursing diploma course in Singapore were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. The paper presents our analysis of two interviews keeping the focus of this description on the changes in beliefs about language learning which correlate with changes in the learning environment. While we have reconstructed the narratives, our intention is to focus on the transformation of beliefs of these learners.

Keywords: learner belief, learner autonomy, learner strategy