The Effect of Gender Differences on Language Achievement Considering Motivation and Self-efficacy in Iranian Context

Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s capabilities to carry out, organize and perform a task successfully. Motivation consists of the internal and external factors that stimulate the desire to attain a goal. Both are forces that make people pursue a goal and overcome obstacles because people with higher self-efficacy and motivation do their best and do not easily give up when confronted with difficulties. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the academic self -efficacy levels and language learning motivations and their effect on language achievement in different gender groups. Teacher as the researcher chose 40 students who were passing general English course at Islamic Azad University- Tabriz Branch. They were chosen by a modified PET test to choose two homogenous groups. They were randomly divided into two gender groups. This is a comparative study. In the first comparative group, the learners were females and in the other comparative group, learners were males. It was found that there was a strong correlation between English language learning motivation and self-efficacy beliefs of students in two groups on language achievement. It revealed that language learning motivations of the students show a significant difference that favors females. Besides, there is a statistically significant difference in the students’ academic self-efficacy beliefs in terms of gender. Male students had higher self-efficacy. The results revealed that high motivation can lead to high language achievement. However, higher self-efficacy does not necessarily lead to better achievement.

Keywords:

EFL , language achievement , Motivation , Self-efficacy