Factors Affecting Academics’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs for Oral Communication in a Foreign Language
Factors Affecting Academics’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs for Oral Communication in a Foreign Language

Summary/Abstract: The use of a foreign language in knowledge production and dissemination is crucially important to academics. Despite this, academics’ self-efficacy belief in their foreign-language oral production is under-researched with little data available for cross-cultural comparisons. This study therefore examined faculty members’ self-efficacy beliefs for foreign-language oral communication by several background variables. A correlational research method was employed: a diverse sample of faculty members completed an online or paper questionnaire assessing their self-efficacy in foreign-language oral communication. The results revealed no significant differences for the gender, age or work experience of the respondents. It was found that faculty members obtained significantly higher scores on the duration of their foreign-language study, previous experience in teaching in a foreign language, experience of living abroad and academic rank. On the whole, the results suggest that there is a significant association between formal and informal foreign-language experience and self-efficacy.

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