English writing skills through perception of siri’ cultural values: Optimism, social support, and academic self-efficacy

Abstract

The mastery of foreign languages, specifically English which is applied predominantly in the international scope, is one form of improving the quality of an indvidual. This research aims to find empirical supports for the relationships between optimism, social support, academic self-efficacy and mastery of academic English paragraph writing skills mediated by perceptions of Siri’ cultural values. Siri’ cultural values are living laws which become the guidance to think, act, and build interpersonal relationship with other individuals. The data in this study were collected through writing tasks and scales of optimism, social support, academic self-efficacy, and perceptions of Siri’ cultural values. The data were subsequently analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that the relationships between optimism, social support, and academic self-efficacy and mastery of academic English paragraph writing skills will be stronger when students are able to perceive cultural values of Siri’ well. It is worthy of attention for educators and education observers that when students are required to be able to master a learning material, teachers need to see it not only from the cognitive side concerned, but also from the psychological side of the students.