Beliefs of Moroccan Students about Learning French: Variations According to Gender, Language Proficiency, and Major

Abstract

Different studies have analyzed the factor structure of the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) (Horwitz, 1987, 1988) through exploratory factor analysis, and the obtained results were partially or not con-firmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Hence, this study examined the subcategories of Horwitz’s (1988) BALLI using confirmatory factor analysis and explored the differences in students’ language beliefs according to their gender, language proficiency, and major. 423 Moroccan university and high school students were randomly selected and administered a French version of BALLI to examine their beliefs about learning French as a foreign language. The obtained data were analyzed using MANOVA tests in SPSS version 25. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the factor structure of Nikitina and Furuoka’s (2006) factor structure. Also, the MANOVA tests revealed that the students’ beliefs were affected by individual differences, such as their gender, language proficiency, and major. Our results provide further justification for the validity of BALLI and indicate that Nikitina and Furuoka’s (2006) refined instrument is more reliable in conducting inferential statistics. Furthermore, our findings imply that research findings about learners’ beliefs about language learning cannot be overgeneralized since these beliefs are shaped by learners’ individual characteristics.