The Effect of Peer Interaction on Iranian EFL Learners’ Self-efficacy in Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

The current study aimed to explore the effects of peer interaction on self-efficacy in vocabulary learning. The participants of the study included 64 EFL students in two intact classes at Takhti high school and Pardis language institute in Hamedan, Iran who were conveniently sampled to take part in the study. They aged 15-17 and were randomly positioned into one experimental and one control group. The participants were assigned as the experimental group and as control group 32 each. the experimental group received the intervention including  peer interaction  for example Word Expert Cards (Richek & McTague, 2008) while those in the control group had time to learn vocabularies and deepen their learningindividuallyand researcher monitored and told them to memorize or paraphrase the vocabularies themselves individually All the participants completed a self-efficacy questionnaire on vocabulary learning. The participants completed a questionnaire on self-efficacy learning twice, once before the treatment as the pretest and a second time after the treatment as the posttest. The data thus obtained were then analyzed through measuring the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to examine the trajectories of change in the participants’ self-efficacy over the treatment. The results indicated a significant increase in the self-efficacy indexes of the experimental group compared with the control group. The findings from the current study provide empirical evidence suggesting that through peer interaction it could be possible to enhance self-efficacy, which in turn may contribute to the development of language skills.