Investigating the Relationship between EFL Learners’ Efficacy, Listening Strategies, and Achievement

Iran, ID LLCE2016-246;     The goal of the study was to investigate the relationship between listening strategies, self-efficacy and listening achievement of EFL learners. It was hypothesized that the strategies that EFL learners employ in the listening class together with their self-efficacy can affect their achievement. To this goal, a group of 80 pre-intermediate EFL learners selected from among 95 language learners participated in a study. The research questions were designed to investigate the relationship among the learners’ self efficacy, their listening strategy use and achievement.  To collect the data of the study, three instruments were used: a questionnaire for discovering learners’ use of metacognitive strategy introduced by Vendergrift (1997), the self-efficacy questionnaire developed by Nezami, Schwarzer, and Jerusalem (1996) and tests of listening. The result of the study revealed that no meaningful relationship could be observed between listening strategies that the subjects employed and their achievement. However, in several cases, significant relationship could be detected between the learners’ self-efficacy and their achievement. In other words, based on the data, it was concluded that self-efficacy is a more important and determining factor of success than listening strategies. The results indicate the idea that self-efficacy that is learners' beliefs in their capability to succeed in executing a task affects the learners’ success more significantly than the strategies they pick up in the listening class.

Key words: Strategy, self-efficacy, listening, Language learning,