Proceedings of The 6th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education
Year: 2023
DOI:
[PDF]
“And This Is My Story”: The Power of Narrative in Understanding Language Learners’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs
Dr. Malak Almohammadi
ABSTRACT:
With the increasing emphasis on learners’ psychological needs in facilitating language learning, more research has been conducted to investigate learners’ needs. One of the critical needs that has received much investigation is learners’ beliefs in their capabilities, namely their self-efficacy beliefs. Previous research has demonstrated its critical impact on learners’ persistence, effort, motivation, and achievement. This study acknowledges the experience-based nature of beliefs and adopts a unique methodology that takes learners’ experiences into account. The research adopts a qualitative approach using narrative interviews. The participants were at a Saudi university studying English as a foreign language and were selected purposefully. In an attempt to cover a wide range of students, the sample was comprised of successful and unsuccessful learners as per their English exam scores. The collected data was analysed using narrative analysis, and the findings showed that students language learning experiences were influenced by their perception of the value of learning English, their peers, their relationships with their teachers, the quality of the teaching, and the involvement of their families in their language learning and education. These influences affect efficacy through their impact on the sources that nurture efficacy beliefs. The research findings further deepen our understanding of learners’ efficacy beliefs by broadening our perspective and including contextual factors that have been understudied. The findings take EFL self-efficacy research a step further, providing insights to policymakers, teachers, and researchers and directing their attention to problematic issues that need to be further addressed and investigated.
keywords: EFL, interviews, language learning, qualitative, students