Raising Teachers’ Awareness of Students' Mindsets in EFL Learning

Abstract

Mindsets have been extensively proved through many previous existing studies to play a promising role in learners’ learning accomplishment. Based on such studies, learners with a growth mindset tend to persevere toward their long-term goal, which subsequently promotes their learning achievement. Holding a fixed mindset, on the other hand, can diminish learners’ learning persistence and eventually blocks the learning achievement. Realizing such a crucial role of the mindset in learners’ learning success, the present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the mindsets students hold in EFL learning. The participants consisted of 101 second-year undergraduate university students majoring in English and enrolled in a course titled ‘Paragraph Writing’. The findings reveal that students typically possess two mindsets: their perception of failure, criticism, and success of others reflects a growth mindset; in contrast, their negative perception of challenges and mistakes displays a fixed mindset. Such findings should, more or less, remind foreign language teachers to be more concerned about students’ mindsets. Subsequently, it should encourage them to gather more insights into how to nurture the students’ growth mindsets for the students’ future growth in any settings they may find themselves in.