| Summary: | 碩士 === 東海大學 === 外國語文學系 === 100 === Beliefs not only direct the focus of one’s efforts, but also act as strong filters of reality. Despite the influence of teachers’ perceptions about pedagogy, it is not surprising to find out that learners sometimes share distinct beliefs with teachers because of learners’ diverse learning background. Realistic and positive beliefs support learners in their quest to overcome difficulties and sustain motivation. However, as much as some beliefs may have a facilitative effect on learning, others may impede it.
The present study aims mainly to explore a) EFL senior high school teachers’ vocabulary teaching beliefs, b) EFL senior high school students’ vocabulary learning beliefs, c) whether there are consistencies or discrepancies between EFL senior high school teachers’ and students’ beliefs in vocabulary teaching/learning activities. The researcher invited 51 senior high school teachers and randomly selected 982 senior high school students from a large group of volunteers to participate in this study. Teacher version and student version repertory grids were used to elicit participants’ beliefs. Amongst a wide variety of teaching and learning activities, 17 most frequently used vocabulary teaching and learning activities and seven sub-beliefs were itemized in the two grids. The overall internal-consistency reliability analysis of the two instruments achieved the values of .97 (teacher version) and .96 (student version), which are convincingly reliable.
The data were analyzed by using mean scores and Independent Samples t-test. The results revealed that while senior high school teachers believed contextual usage, extensive reading, word affixes, synonyms/antonyms, pronunciation modeling, and cooperative activities were effective, they expressed disapprovals with definition in L1, repeated drills, and keyword method. On the other hand, students generally exhibited a moderate to somewhat positive attitude toward most of the vocabulary learning activities so they barely had strong preferences and fierce oppositions. Nonetheless, they were prone to believe that pronunciation modeling, contextual usage, cooperative activities, and synonyms/antonyms were more useful when learning vocabulary. Furthermore, discrepancies were found between teachers’ and students’ vocabulary teaching and learning beliefs, especially under vocabulary meaning conveyance and vocabulary usages. Most of the discrepancies were caused by, on one hand, students’ emphasis on vocabulary memorization, pronunciation, and L1; on the other hand, teachers’ overly positive vocabulary teaching beliefs. On the basis of research findings, implications, limitations, and suggestions were made for the future study to explore a comprehensive picture of teachers’ and students’ beliefs.
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