Examining Entity and Incremental Beliefs and Individual Differences in Adult Arabic Learners at Iran Language Institute

Some people attribute successful language learning to an innate and invariable aptitude while others believe that the ability to learn a language can be improved. The present paper, which is applied and field research in nature, aims to describe the 18 components involved in Language Mindsets Inventory (containing entity and incremental beliefs in three areas of language intelligence, empowerment/aptitude and age sensitivity in learning a second language) in adult Arabic learners studying at Iran Language Institute (ILI) and investigates the relationship among four variables of age, gender, language level and multilingualism (their familiarity with other languages) and the participants’ language mindsets. The statistical population of this study consisted all adult language learners of ILI from which a statistical sample comprised of 103 Arabic students was extracted who were learning Arabic at the elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. The data collection tool of this research was the standard questionnaire of Language Mindsets Inventory (LMI), proposed by Lou and Noels (2017b), in which the items are designed based on the Likert scale. For the statistical analysis, SPSS software version 26 and various parametric and non-parametric tests were employed. The findings of the present research indicated that there was no significant t relationship between age and none of the components of entity and incremental beliefs. However, there was a relationship among three variables of age, gender, and familiarity with other languages with entity and incremental beliefs. Moreover, higher language levels and the number of languages learned were found to have a direct relationship with incremental beliefs.