English Self-Efficacy Beliefs of EFL Low Proficiency Graduate Students

All Master's degree students at Kasetsart University, Thailand, are required to take an English course--the English Required by Graduate School unless they pass the standard test offered by KU-Test Center. The main objective of this course is to practice students’ reading skills in English expository texts with the emphasis on the use of strategies that enhance effective reading comprehension. Through ten years’ experience, the researcher has observed that most of the students who studied in this course had low proficiency in their reading ability. Many students had to attend the course several times before completing it. Various studies indicated that there are many factors that contribute to the students’ language learning proficiency including their self-efficacy beliefs. Self-efficacy refers to people’s judgments about their abilities to complete a task. It is an important factor which indicates the success or failure in students’ academic study as it influences students’ planning, motivation, strategy use, and ultimately actions (Bandura, 1990). This study investigated the self-efficacy beliefs in English of 43 KU low proficiency graduate students’ enrolling in English Required by Graduate School during April-May 2013 and examined the sources that contributed to their success or failure in learning English together with its consequences. The data was collected both quantitatively and qualitatively by using a questionnaire adapted from Bandura (1990) to assess the students’ English self-efficacy beliefs and an open-ended interview to explore the sources that conduced to the students’ perception toward their success or failure in learning English.