E-Diary to Enhance Language Learners’ English Writing Self-Efficacy

Taiwan, ID LLCE2016-267;        The present study is to explore the effect of E-diary on EFL college learners’ English writing self-efficacy.  Self-efficacy, claimed by a large number of researchers, has a direct and powerful influence on learners’ academic accomplishments.  Learners with higher levels of self-efficacy would perform better than those with lower ones.  However, there is little research on improving English writing self-efficacy through keeping E-diaries, especially on Facebook.  The participants, in the study, 50 non-English-majored college sophomores in Taiwan, were required to keep a journal through Facebook message exchange.  They wrote a weekly E-diary to their partners for sixteen weeks.  In an E-diary, they could share their English learning experiences or daily lives.  For the purpose of finding out whether there would be any differences in the level of English writing self-efficacy, a series of statistical tests were carried out.  Besides the quantitative results, discourse analysis was applied to reveal more about their perceptions of the E-diary exchange activities.  After an academic semester, the findings of the study reveal that the participants’ level of English writing self-efficacy was enhanced.  Their perceptions of the E-diary were positive and most of them would like to keep English writing as a habit even after the course completion. 

Keywords: English self-efficacy, diary writing, EFL learners