Investigating the Relationship between Iranian Undergraduate TEFL Learners’ Self-regulation and Self-efficacy

Abstract

The present empirical study investigated the relationship between Iranian undergraduate TEFL learners’ self-regulation and their self-efficacy. For this end, there have been a total number of 120 college students learning English as a foreign language who volunteered to complete the two quantitative questionnaires of self-regulation and self-efficacy respectively. The participants were informed of the anonymous nature of the data collection process in advance. They were also told that their responses would certainly be kept confidential and that they had the right to quit at any part of the survey. It took around 15–20 minutes for each respondent to complete the survey. In the meanwhile, some of the participants (around ten) also willingly answered the qualitative descriptive semi-structured questions of the interview, until that the interview responses were saturated. After the process of data collection, the findings were measured through correlation analysis, indicating that self-regulation and self-efficacy were jointly linked and had a directly positive relationship. Accordingly, it was revealed that the employment of these two highly associated psychological constructs could systematically guide and help learners to enhance their learning capabilities and lead them to ultimate desired learning goals. Ultimately, it was concluded from the findings of the current study that the delicate association between self-regulation and self-efficacy was really helpful for learners to lead them successfully to their academic goals.