Raising Teachers’ Awareness of Students' Mindsets in EFL Learning ISSN 1905-7725 NET 15.1 January 2021 45 Raising Teachers’ Awareness of Students' Mindsets in EFL Learning Ratchadaporn Janudom International College Surat Thani Campus Prince of Songkla University, Surat Thani Campus, Thailand Email: ratchadaporn.j@psu.ac.th Received: 2020-07-21 Revised: 2021-01-12 Accepted: 2021-01-20 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. Keywords: mindsets, growth mindset, fixed mindset, belief in intelligence Introduction One of the ultimate goals of education is to lead learners towards achievement in academic learning and, of course, success in other aspects of their life. What has been found from the current situation is that in the same education system, while many learners become achievers, many others encounter failures. Although learning curricula have been rigorously designed to build successful learners, it is undeniable that not all learners are capable of achieving the program learning outcomes as stated in the curricula. This obviously holds true in the English Learning Program as it has been found based on the researcher’s first-hand English teaching experience that throughout their four years at the university, some students were unable to be successful learners in their English learning; nevertheless, many, even with insufficient English background at the beginning, could become high English learning achievers. Simply put, the same academic inputs the curricula provide can result in different levels of learners’ attainment. In addition, students’ initial level of ability does not determine their final level of accomplishment. Unquestionably, educational processes involve not only academic inputs, but also other underlying factors which somehow either boost or obstruct learners’ achievement. Many educational psychologists as well as educators have long been pondering factors affecting learners’ success. The most influential recent theory, which clearly explains why some become successful and others fail, was proposed by Dweck (2006). It states that what determines learners’ success is their mindsets. Based on Dweck's studies, students’ perception of intelligence, or ability, reflects their mindsets. Those with the belief that brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Assumption Journals