THE EFFECT OF LANGUAGE LEARNING PODCASTS ON ENGLISH SELF-EFFICACY

Based on earlier research findings that experience affects self-efficacy perception, the present study probes into possible effects of E-learning experiences on English self-efficacy by enabling participants to listen to language learning podcasts repetitively and do related task-based activities. It focuses on first-year university students’ self-efficacy perceptions of listening, speaking, reading and writing at elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. Participants’ self-efficacy perceptions concerning motivation and expectations are also analyzed. The quasi-experimental study has a pretest-posttest research design, in which a non-random convenience sample of 187 university students were given the English Self-Efficacy Scale before and after a 12-week podcast-based language learning program. Collected data are analyzed by using descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Wilcoxon test results show that there is a statistically significant difference in participants’ perceptions of their listening comprehension, speaking, and reading skills. Self-efficacy perceptions concerning writing have improved significantly, as well. These findings support the idea that novel technology-based applications can have positive outcomes for language learning. However, participants’ self-efficacy perception concerning reading and understanding advanced level stories did not improve significantly. The finding that participants’ self-efficacy perceptions concerning advanced level of proficiency did not improve may be due to the fact that the level of the podcasts and related tasks covered by the program was elementary and that the program duration was insufficient for gaining high self-efficacy for advanced level skills in English.