论文作业

In Chinese culture Confucianism and Communist ideologies (Marxism, Mao Zedongthought) have coexisted for a long time. China as a socialistic society is often referred as a“collectivistic culture”. Since the opening of China to Western influences and with the furtheracceleration by the admittance to WTO in 2001, signs of foreign culture effects can be seeneverywhere at hand in China's cities. In cross-cultural psychology the traditionalconceptualization of individualism as ideas on opposite ends does not se emsto meet today’s globalization and it needs better formulation. This study tested Triandis' (1995)horizontal and vertical individualism/collectivism typology for its ability to detect adult EFLlearners’ cultural orientations within a traditionally conceptualized collectivistic culture, andexamined the effects of these cultural orientations in adult EFL leaner’s learning beliefs.

From the statistics the Chinese adult EFL learners are still collectivists but not extremecollectivistic any more. Those adult learners also appear a strong horizontal individualisticorientations. The mean value of the test on their collectivistic dimensions 4.9 are all abovethe standard mean value 4 and more than the means of the individualistic dimensions 3.8.That means the current adult EFL learners are having sound collectivistic culturalbackgrounds

The subjects in this research are the 113 adult students learning English as a foreignlanguage at the school of continuous education in Dalian University of Foreign Languages.The valid Questionnaires are 104.Triandis (1995) Individualism Collectivism Scale (ICS) andHorwitz (1987) the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) are adapted toexplore the relationship between levels of vertical and horizontal individualism andcolle ctivism, and the learner’s beliefs respectively. The collected data are analyzed byIndependent t-test and Descriptive Statistics in the Statistical Program for Social Sciences(SPSS) version 13.0. Statistics suggests that the group aged from 18-24 years adult EFLlearners are easily than the other group aged from 25-38 years to be influenced by theIndividualistic values, both in horizontal and vertical dimensions. They also present stronglyHorizontal Collectivistic orientations than the other ones. Adult EFL learners who havecompleted a university-level education and have the above level of their previous educationalbackground are more Horizontal Individualistic and more Collectivistic in both dimensions.(Who are they?) The cultural orientations can influence adu lt learner’s beliefs on severalaspects. Our findings suggest that the Collectivistic orientation learners are more likely thanthe individualistic ones to believe that it is easier to speak than understand English. TheCollectivistic orientation learners have more negative beliefs than individualistic orientationlearners toward difficulty of English learning. The two groups of different culturalorientations also have different beliefs on the learning strategies. Based on the Beliefs aboutLanguage Learning Inventory, our findings also show that adult learners believe English isdifficult to learn; vocabulary and grammar and oral English practice are all important to learnEnglish well; and the more popular motivation is to get a good job opportunity.From this research we can have a better understandi ng of the participants’ English language learning beliefs, as well as the effects of individualistic—collectivistic orientationson their language learning beliefs. Also it can help teachers to establish positive beliefs inadult learners on English