摘要：This article reports on a study that investigated metacognitive knowledge or beliefs about languagelearning of 470 Turkish EFL learners in secondary education. The primary aims of the study were to explorewhat beliefs Turkish students in secondary education held about learning English as a foreign language (EFL),how their belief systems were organized and whether there were significant differences in belief systems amonglearner groups according to variables such as social and school contexts, gender, age and grade level. Popularconceptions of language learning were collected using a structured questionnaire based on Horwitz’s BeliefsAbout Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) (1987). An exploratory factor analysis was performed to identifyTurkish EFL learners’ patterns of beliefs about language learning. Subsequently, various statistical tests werecarried out to find out intra- and inter-group variability in belief categories. The results of this studydemonstrated that Turkish EFL learners have a broad range of conceptions both similar to and different fromthose reported in the current literature. It is further evident that learners’ metacognitive knowledge or beliefsabout language learning have variability in terms of social and educational contexts, age, gender, and stages oflanguage learning. The study also suggested that curriculum designers and decision-makers as well as languageinstructors attend to the accumulation of metacognitive knowledge or learner beliefs.
