The Relationship among Iranian EFL Learners ’ Self-efficacy , Autonomy and Listening Comprehension Ability

This study investigated the interrelationships among EFL learners’ self-efficacy, autonomy and listening comprehension ability. Ninety female learners of intermediate level participated in the study. They were between 16 and 24 years old. In order to obtain the required data on the three variables (i.e., self-efficacy, autonomy, and listening comprehension ability), the researchers, after administering a standard language proficiency test to ensure the participants’ homogeneity, used Listening Self-efficacy Beliefs Questionnaire, Listening Autonomy Questionnaire, and Listening Proficiency Test, respectively. First, the participants were asked to complete the two self-report scales, after which they were given a listening comprehension test to attain their listening comprehension ability. The data were analyzed using three Pearson’s Product-moment correlation coefficients to assess the relationships among the research variables. The findings revealed that there was a positive correlation among Iranian EFL learners’ listening self-efficacy beliefs, listening autonomy, and listening comprehension ability. Accordingly, it is suggested that building self-efficacy and autonomy in listening comprehension is crucial to ensure the success of EFL learners in listening comprehension.


Introduction
Listening comprehension is an essential skill for good language learner.It has received noticeable consideration in second language throughout 1990s.According to Howatt and Dakin (as cited in Guo & Wills 2009, p.2) listening is the ability to determine and comprehend what the speaker is talking about.Lynch (1998) stated that listening includes a complicated process that lets us make sense of spoken language by making use of a variety of sources such as phonetic, prosodic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic.Moreover, it is said that language learners bring their own unique characteristics (e.g., personal, academic, social/emotional or cognitive characteristics) to a learning environment.One of these characteristics affecting language learning is learner autonomy.
Autonomy in language teaching was first defined by Holec (1981) as "the ability to take charge of one's own learning."Benson (2001) emphasized that an acceptable explanation of autonomy in language learning should take into account the importance of three levels of possible control such as control over learning management, control over cognitive process and control over learning content.Autonomy is generally defined as the outcome of learning in which the goals, progress and evaluation of learning have been done by the learners themselves.Learner autonomy has gained more attention in the last 25 years.Little (1991) defined it as the 'buzz-word' of the 1990's in second language learning field.Learner autonomy claims that involving students in decision making processes related to their own language competence, "they are likely to be more enthusiastic about learning" (Littlejohn, 1985, p. 258).According to Risenberg and Zimmerman (1992) learners with a high degree of learner autonomy would achieve high scores and those with low degrees of learner autonomy would achieve low scores if learner autonomy could augment the academic scores.
Another learner characteristics affecting language learning is learner's self-efficacy which was first introduced by Bandura in 1977.For him self-efficacy theory is one aspect of social cognitive theory.Social cognitive theory posits that people are able to regulate and reflect on themselves and to actively shape their environments rather than passively react to it.Bandura (1977) defined self-efficacy as a particular type of expectancy related to a person's beliefs in his/her ability to accomplish a specific action or series of actions needed to produce a result.He later extended this definition.
In Bandura (1989), self-efficacy is explained as people's beliefs about their own abilities to control events which may touch their lives, and their beliefs in their abilities to combine the motivation, cognitive resources, and other necessary actions to control task demands.Based on this definition, it can be understood that self-efficacy is not concerned with the skills individuals have to perform a task, but with judgments of what they can do with those possessed skills.Efficacy doesn't refer to a static ability that people possess or don't possess; rather, Bandura (1997) stated that it is "a generative capability in which cognitive, social, emotional and behavioral subskills must be organized and effectively orchestrated to serve innumerable purposes" (pp. 36-37).He points out that having a skill is different from being able to use it or to incorporate it into a proper course of action in order to use it effectively in different situations.High self-efficacy beliefs result in goal-oriented actions on the part of the learner and have a generative capability; they force learners to try more in pursuit of their goals, and make them more confident in the face of problems and difficulties.High levels of self-efficacy in a specific domain have been associated with high levels of achievement in that domain (Bandura, 1977;McCombs, 2001).Ghonsooly and Elahi (2011) investigated the relationship between EFL learners' self-efficacy in reading comprehension and their reading comprehension ability.The results indicated that learners with high levels of self-efficacy achieved higher scores in reading comprehension course than those with lower levels of self-efficacy.Bandura (1997) pointed out that self-efficacy influences students' aspiration and their level of interest in academic work.Individuals' perceptions about their efficacy in a particular domain will enhance their motivation and help them establish higher goals for themselves and try hard to achieve them.In turn, this can lead to autonomous learners who are able to take charge of their own learning even outside the classroom.
The results of the studies regarding the relationship among learner autonomy, self-efficacy, and language learning have not always been consistent.Dafei (2007) investigated the relationship between learner autonomy and English proficiency.The results indicated that the students' English proficiency was significantly and positively related to their learner autonomy.Arkoc (2008) conducted a study on the relationship between autonomous learning and listening comprehension.She used pre-and post-tests, autonomy assessment questionnaire and CAE advanced listening comprehension tests as assessment procedures.The results indicated that there was no significant relationship between learners' autonomy and their listening comprehension.Huang and Shanmao (1996) conducted a study with four ESL students in a reading and writing class in a university Intensive English Program.They found a positive relationship between the participants' self-efficacy beliefs and their reading and writing.Mills (2004) surveyed the relationship between French reading and listening self-efficacy and listening proficiency of American college students.The findings revealed that French reading self-efficacy was a predictor of French reading proficiency but French listening self-efficacy was not a predictor of listening comprehension.Rahimi and Abedini (2009) explored the interface between EFL learner's listening self-efficacy and their listening proficiency.The results of the study indicated that there was a positive relationship between listening comprehension self-efficacy and listening proficiency.Similarly, Chen (2007) studied the relationship between EFL learners' self-efficacy beliefs and their listening proficiency at two large universities in Taiwan.The students' scores in listening course were considered as their listening proficiency level.A survey questionnaire consisting of two sub-scales of 1) English listening self-efficacy scale constructed by the researcher, and 2) English anxiety and perceived English value scale was used in this study.The results showed that EFL learners' self-efficacy beliefs were positively correlated with their listening scores.Mojoudi and Tabatabaei (2014) investigated the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and autonomy of Iranian intermediate and upper intermediate EFL learners.The results revealed a strong correlation between self-efficacy beliefs and autonomy among upper intermediate EFL learners.Moreover, the mean score of the two variables was rather higher among upper intermediate learners than the intermediate ones.MousapourNegari and Donyadary (2013) studied the relationship between self-efficacy, autonomy and medical learners' language performance.Results of statistical analysis of Pearson correlation denoted that there is a strong relationship between students' self-efficacy beliefs and their language performances.Based on the above-mentioned review, it can be concluded that self-efficacy and autonomy are of high importance in student achievements including their listening comprehension ability.According to Pajares (2000), the study of self-efficacy in relation to language achievement is still new and there has been little research in the area in comparison to the work done in other areas.Lack of research in exploring the possible relationships between Iranian EFL learners' self-efficacy beliefs, autonomy and listening comprehension ability stimulated this study to delve into the possible relationship between these three variables.Findings will shed more light on the importance of including these psychological concepts in learners' learning process and could provide valuable insight into the understanding of students' beliefs in their own abilities to process and control oral input.Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the possible relationships between self-efficacy beliefs, autonomy and listening comprehension ability of Iranian EFL learners.In fact, it provided deeper understandings of the concepts that may be connected with the development of listening ability.
The study posed the following research questions: RQ 1 : Is there any relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and their listening comprehension ability?RQ 2 : Is there any relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening autonomy and their listening comprehension ability?RQ 3 : Is there any relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and their listening autonomy?

Participants
This study was conducted with 90 female learners.The participants were intermediate EFL learners of English at Iran Language Institute in Tabriz, Iran.They were between 16 and 24 years old.All the subjects were nearly at the same level of language proficiency.However, prior to the research, Preliminary English Test (PET) was used to ensure the homogeneity of participants in terms of language proficiency.The participants were chosen out of a pool of 110 learners.Through considering the normal distribution of scores on the proficiency test, only those whose scores were one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean (M =38.15) of the normal distribution curve were chosen for the study.

Instruments
In order to obtain the required data on the three variables (i.e., self-efficacy, autonomy, and listening comprehension ability) the researcher used the following instruments.

The Preliminary English Test (PET)
The Preliminary English Test (PET), a second level Cambridge ESOL exam for intermediate level learners, was used to ascertain the homogeneity of the participants in terms of language proficiency.The test included four sections of Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking.Speaking and Writing sections were removed for practical and administrative reasons.Those whose scores were one standard deviation above and below the mean (i.e., between45.30and 31 out of 50) were selected to participate in the study.

Listening Self-efficacy Beliefs Questionnaire
In order to measure the participants' self-efficacy in listening comprehension, the researchers used a questionnaire designed by Rahimi and Abedini (2009) (see Appendix I) based on three questionnaires of Beliefs About Language Learning (BALLI) developed by Hortwiz (1985), Persian Adaptation of the General Self-efficacy Scale constructed by Nezami, Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1996) and Morgan-Links Student Efficacy Scale (MJSES) made by Jinks and Morgan (1999).This questionnaire consisted of twenty 5-point Likert type items ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree" based on the items of the above-mentioned questioners and some added by Rahimi and Abedini (2009).A value of 1 was assigned to strongly disagree, and 5 to strongly agree.The Cronbach alpha coefficient for the scale was 0.78.

Listening Autonomy Questionnaire
The autonomy scale selected for this study was an autonomy questionnaire of listening comprehension skills developed by Arkoc (2008) (see Appendix II).It is a questionnaire with 51 items that aims to examine the autonomy of language learners in listening comprehension and the items are answered on a 5-point Likert scale.

Listening Proficiency Test
The listening proficiency test used for evaluating the participants' level of proficiency in English was selected from Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test by Deborah Phillips (2001).The test consisted of eight series of conversations and talks followed by four to six questions.The total number of multiple-choice questions was forty.The reliability of the test was also checked using KR-21 method and the result was 0.86, which reveals a high level of reliability of the test.

Procedure
The participants were given 50 minutes to complete two self-report scales, Listening Self-efficacy Beliefs Questionnaire (Rahimi & Abedini, 2009) and Listening Autonomy Questionnaire (Arkoc, 2008), to measure their self-efficacy and autonomy in listening comprehension.After completing the self reports, they were given a listening comprehension proficiency test to attain their listening comprehension ability.

Design
This study focused on investigating any possible relationship among Iranian EFL learners' self-efficacy, autonomy and listening comprehension ability.Since there could not be any control over the variables or treatments before measuring them, and the researchers only aimed at finding any probable relationship between the variables of the study, the design of the study was correlational ex-post-facto.The data obtained through the procedure described above were analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 17.0) to answer the research questions.All the research questions were answered by obtaining Pearson's Product-moment correlation coefficients to assess the relationships among the variables of the study (i.e., listening self-efficacy, listening autonomy, and listening comprehension ability).

Results
To provide a general description of the performance of the participants concerning PET, listening self-efficacy, listening autonomy, and listening comprehension ability, the researchers conducted a preliminary analysis by computing the descriptive statistics of them.
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics on PET test.Regarding the results, the mean of the scores for 110 participants came out to be 38.15 and the standard deviation came out to be 7.15.So, to determine the homogeneity of the participants those whose scores fell between one standard deviation above and below the mean (i.e., between 45.30 and 31 out of 50) participated in the study.Listening self-efficacy was measured by the 20-item questionnaire designed by Rahimi and Abedini (2009).
Using the 5-point Likert type response scale, it yields scores ranging from 1 to 5 for each item.Scores on this questionnaire can range from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of 100.From Table 2, it can be noted that the mean score for listening self-efficacy scores of 90 participants was 75.95 and the standard deviation came out to be 16.16.The autonomy questionnaire of listening comprehension skills developed by Arkoc (2008) was used to measure listening autonomy.It is a Likert-type instrument yielding scores ranging from 1 to 5 for each item.Scores on this questionnaire can range from a minimum of 51 to a maximum of 255.Table 3 displays the descriptive statistics for listening autonomy.As the results show, the mean score for listening autonomy scores of 90 participants was 191.43 and the standard deviation came out to be 40.14.To investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL learners' scores on listening self-efficacy and their listening comprehension scores, a two-tailed Pearson Product-moment correlation analysis was conducted and the result indicated that there was actually a positive correlation between the two variables (Table 5).
Based on Table 5, the correlation coefficient between EFL learners' scores on listening self-efficacy and their listening comprehension scores is statistically significant and positive (r= .56,p= .00<.05).Consequently, the first null hypothesis, there is no relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and their listening comprehension ability, was rejected and it can be concluded that there is a positive relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and their listening comprehension ability.
In order to answer the second question of the study which addressed the relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening autonomy and their listening comprehension ability, the researcher calculated the Pearson correlation coefficient between the participants' scores on listening autonomy questionnaire and their listening comprehension scores.According to the findings, there is a significant and positive relationship between students' listening autonomy and their listening comprehension performance (r=.58).The p value of the analysis indicted a high significant level (p=.000).The correlation coefficient, r, also has a positive sign indicating that the direction of the relationship between the two variables is positive.Thus, the second null hypothesis, there is no relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening autonomy and their listening comprehension ability, was rejected and it can be concluded that there is a positive relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening autonomy and their listening comprehension ability.
To answer the third question the same correlation formula was used to find the relationship between the participants' listening self-efficacy scores and their listening autonomy scores.The results of the Pearson correlation revealed that there exists a positive correlation between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and their listening autonomy (r= 0.66, p< 0.01; Table 7).Therefore, the third null hypothesis, there is no relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and listening autonomy was rejected.It can be concluded that there is a positive relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and listening autonomy.

Discussion
The purpose of the present study was to explore the possible relationship among two key psychological concepts, listening self-efficacy and listening autonomy, and one of the important language skills, listening comprehension ability, among Iranian EFL learners.The findings revealed that there is a positive correlation between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy beliefs and their listening comprehension ability.This study, in line with previous research findings (e.g.Rahimi and Abedini (2009); Chen (2007); Mills (2004)), provided further evidence to support Pajares ' (2000) argument that inner processes of students and their beliefs about their capabilities must be given attention, since they strongly affect success or failure in school.The findings are also in line with social cognitive theory.Bandura (1997Bandura ( , 1986) ) pointed out that self-efficacy is an important psychological factor in learners' functioning.Self-efficacious learners believe in their ability to accomplish tasks successfully.
The researchers, also, investigated the relationship between listening autonomy and listening comprehension ability of Iranian EFL learners.The results revealed that there is a direct and positive correlation between these two variables.This finding is consistent with the findings of Dafei (2007) who found that the students' English proficiency was significantly and positively related to their learner autonomy.According to Nucamendi (2009), autonomy is crucial to the success of the learners and should be an essential aim of any language learning program.However, the results of the study by Arkoc (2008) revealed that there was no significant relationship between learners' autonomy and their listening comprehension.
The results of the study regarding the third question which addressed the possible relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and listening autonomy showed that there is a positive relationship between Iranian EFL learners' listening self-efficacy and listening autonomy.This is in accord with the findings of earlier studies (e.g.Mojoudi and Tabatabaei (2014); Mousapour Negari and Donyadary ( 2013)).
The present study suggests that in order to ensure learners' better accomplishment, teachers should nurture their sense of efficacy and autonomy.They should help learners develop a positive attitude towards their language learning experience and their capabilities to execute tasks.This belief of accomplishment needs to continue.Students who are not sure about their own abilities to do better in different skills would be hindered, and thus less likely to gain better scores in tests.Accordingly, building self-efficacy and autonomy is one of crucial factors in the success of learners.Self-learning and independent learning are the results of autonomy in language learning.This study was limited to Iranian female learners.Gender was not considered as a variable.So, generalizing the current findings beyond the population should be done with great caution.Further studies are needed to investigate self-efficacy and autonomy of EFL/ESL/ESP learners to promote their educational experiences.Other researchers can include gender as a variable affecting self-efficacy.

31
I can understand a wide range of recorded and broadcast audio material, including some non-standard usage, and identify .finerpoints of detail including implicit attitudes and relationships between speakers.

32
I can understand recordings in standard dialect likely to be encountered in social, professional or academic life and identify speaker viewpoints and attitudes as well as the information content.

33
I can understand most radio documentaries and most other recorded or broadcast audio material delivered in standard dialect and can identify the speaker's mood, tone etc.

34
I can understand the information content of the majority of recorded or broadcast audio material on topics of personal interest delivered in clear standard speech.

35
I can understand the main points of radio news bulletins and simpler recorded material about familiar subjects delivered relatively slowly and clearly.
36 I can understand and extract the essential information from short, recorded passages dealing with predictable everyday matters which are delivered slowly and clearly.

37
I am aware of the implications and allusions of what is said and can make notes on them as well as on the actual words used by the speaker.

38
I can take detailed notes during a lecture on topics in his/her .field of interest, recording the information so accurately and so close to the original that the notes could also be useful to other people.

39
I can understand a clearly structured lecture on a familiar subject, and can take notes on points which strike him/her as important, even though he/she tends to concentrate on the words themselves and therefore to miss some information 40 I can take notes during a lecture which are precise enough for his/her own use at a later date, provided the topic is within his/her .field of interest and the talk is clear and well-structured 41 I can take notes as a list of key points during a straightforward lecture, provided the topic is familiar, and the talk is both formulated in simple language and delivered in clearly articulated standard speech 42I can summarize information from different sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation of the overall result.43 I can summarize long, demanding texts.44 I can summarize a wide range of factual and imaginative texts, commenting on and discussing contrasting points of view and the main themes 45 I can summarize extracts from news items, interviews or documentaries containing opinions, argument and discussion 46 I can summarize the plot and sequence of events in a .filmor play.47 I can collate short pieces of information from several sources and summarize them for somebody else.48 I can paraphrase short written passages in a simple fashion, using the original text wording and ordering 49 I can pick out and reproduce key words and phrases or short sentences from a short text within the learner's limited competence and experience.50 I can copy out short texts in printed or clearly handwritten format.51 I can copy out single words and short texts presented in standard printed format.

Table 1 .
Descriptive statistics for PET scores

Table 2 .
Descriptive statistics for listening self-efficacy scores

Table 3 .
Descriptive statistics for listening autonomy scoresListening comprehension ability of the participants was measured by listening tests selected from Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test by Deborah Phillips(2001).Table4displays the descriptive statistics for listening comprehension scores.As the results show, the mean score for listening comprehension of 90 participants was 29.78 and the standard deviation came out to be 5.34.

Table 5 .
Pearson correlation between the participants' scores on listening self-efficacy and their listening Table 6 below displays the results of Pearson correlation.