ASSESSING ESP LEARNERSʹʹ BELIEFS ABOUT LANGUAGE LEARNING: A SURVEY IN AN IRANIAN LOCAL CONTEXT

Following cognitive views towards language pedagogy, this preliminary report illustrates the beliefs of a community of non-English-major university students (N=139) about learning English as-a-foreign-language (EFL) in a dominantly bilingual Kurdish-Persian academic context in Ilam, in western Iran. To recognize the beliefs, BALLI (Horwitz, 1988) as a popular survey instrument was slightly modified and administered to the participants. Adopting a descriptive approach, the findings were generally classified and discussed in terms of five components: (a) language aptitude; (b) language learning difficulty; (c) nature of language learning; (d) learning and communication strategies; and, (e) motivation and expectations. The results also revealed these ethnic learners have a broad but consistent range of conceptions about EFL similar to and different from studies reported in the current literature. Finally, as a pedagogical implication, it was suggested that EFL teachers should consider the susceptibility of learnersʹ beliefs to change during time and develop useful strategies to relieve clashing beliefs among language learners.