Investigating the Inter-Relationships Between Beliefs, Autonomy, and Motivation in the Context of Foreign Language Learning/Teaching

Abstract

This article aims at investigating the beliefs of teachers' and students' of English as a foreign language in the public school network of the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The analysis focuses on five main topics, namely, aptitude to learn languages, the degree of difficulty of a particular language, the nature of learning languages in general, the learning strategies and the degree of autonomy and motivation of the students involved in the research. The results provide evidence that teachers' and students' beliefs are relatively similar as far as the nature and the degree of difficulty of English are concerned, as well as in relation to the notion of aptitude to learn languages and even in relation to the learning strategies used in the classroom. However, they differ considerably in the vision that both groups have of the student.