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Chapter Four Results and Discussion

4.1 The overall pattern of pre-service EFL teachers’ beliefs
This section aims to display beliefs pre-service EFL teachers have. Researchquestion one is analyzed by frequencies, means and standard deviations. Thefrequency of pre-service teachers’ responses for all these 45 items in the questionnaireand the relevant analysis are presented according to the six dimensions of teachers’beliefs in Table 4.1 to 4.7. For the convenience in reporting, the percentages for 1(strongly disagree), 2 (disagree) and the percentage for 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree)are combined. Table 4.1 presents responses to 1-23 items which concern beliefs about Englishlearning. As this category has 4 sections, the results obtained from the participants arecategorized into four groups (See Table 4.1). The items in group 1 address pre-serviceteachers’ beliefs about foreign language aptitude. As it can be seen from the table, thehighest mean in this group (M=4.11) shows that pre-service teachers mostly agree thestatement that children are easier to learn a foreign language than adults (item 1).
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Conclusion

The first goal of the present research is to investigate teachers’ beliefs among thepre-service EFL teachers. And the findings show that pre-service teachers’ beliefs areopen-oriented as a whole, but differ in the degree of the openness in the sixdimensions of teachers’ beliefs. Their responses also reveal some beliefs which aretradition-oriented.: (1) as for beliefs about learning and communication strategies,they stress the need to repeat, immediately error correct and practice with cassettes ortapes; (2) for beliefs about English teaching, they emphasize the importance ofmaintaining classroom discipline in class and the negative influence of poorclassroom discipline; (3) as far as beliefs about learner role, there are still somepre-service teachers taking it as resisters; and for teacher role, some pre-serviceteachers regard it as controller and center. And though the overall beliefs are found tobe positive, it is notable that some beliefs are not so strong, such as “Chinese peopleare good at learning foreign languages” (M=2.84); “women are better than men atlearning foreign languages” (M=3.17) and less than half deem learner role asindividual explorers.
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