2017 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 265-280
The present research examined relationships between high school students’ beliefs, learning strategies, and academic achievement in learning English. The participants were 723 students from all grades at a high school in western Japan. Factor analysis of beliefs about learning revealed that quantity orientation and strategy orientation were subject-general beliefs, whereas traditional orientation and application orientation were subject-specific beliefs. Factor analysis of learning strategies also revealed 2 indirect strategies: metacognitive strategy and social strategy, and 4 direct strategies: organization strategy, imaging strategy, repetition strategy, and vocalization strategy. A path analysis revealed that subject-general beliefs contribute to subject-specific beliefs and indirect strategies contribute to direct strategies. Also it revealed 2 causal relations: the subject-general learning process, in which subject-general beliefs affect indirect strategies, and the subject-specific learning process, in which subject-specific beliefs influence direct strategies and academic achievement. These results suggest the importance of scrutinizing English learning from both viewpoints: subject-general and subject-specific, and that there should be a focus on the subject-general learning process when attempting to improve the whole learning behavior, and on the subject-specific learning process when attempting to improve academic achievements in English learning.
