The Effect of Implementing Selected Strategies on Promoting Kurdish University EFL Students’ Self-Efficacy

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of implementing targeted pedagogical strategies on enhancing the academic self-efficacy of Kurdish EFL students. To accurately measure this relationship, a student self-efficacy scale (mainly adapted from Morgan-Jinks Scale) was employed to assess students' perceived confidence in their academic potentials. During the 2023-2024 academic year, three different strategies- brainstorming, cooperative work, and debating - were integrated into teaching academic skills module to 62 first-year English Department students at Salahaddin University. The self-efficacy scale was administered twice: once as a pre-intervention and the second time after the full implementation of the strategies. Further qualitative data was collected through in-depth interviews with ten students. The collected data were subsequently analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), and the interview responses were analysed thematically.

The quantitative findings unequivocally revealed that the integration of these three strategies significantly boosted first-year students' self-efficacy in academic skills. Momentously, while all the three strategies demonstrated marked efficacy, among them cooperative work emerged as the most potent catalyst in positively promoting students’ self-efficacy