Assessing academic writing self‐efficacy belief and writing performance in a foreign language context

• Published in: Foreign language annals Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 144 - 169
• Main Authors: Teng, Mark Feng, Wang, Chuang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Alexandria Wiley 01.03.2023; American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
• Subjects: Academic Language; Academic writing; Behavior; Beliefs; Chinese languages; Comparative Analysis; Confidence; Correlation; Educational objectives; English as a second language; English for Academic Purposes; Feedback; Foreign Countries; Foreign language learning; Goal setting; Independent study; Knowledge; Language; Language assessment; language learning strategies; Learning Processes; Learning Strategies; Memory; Metacognition; Motivation; Prediction; Regulation; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Second language writing; Second Languages; Self Efficacy; Self evaluation; self‐efficacy belief; Skills; Social Cognition; Statistical analysis; Student Attitudes; Student writing; Undergraduate Students; writing assessment; Writing Evaluation; Writing Instruction; Writing Skills; China
• DOI: 10.1111/flan.12638
• ISSN: 0015-718X

The first purpose of this empirical study was to assess and validate the Academic Writing Self‐Efficacy Belief Questionnaire (AWSEBQ) framed by social cognitive theory. The second purpose was to evaluate the predictive effects of different aspects of self‐efficacy beliefs on academic writing performance. Data were collected from 743 learners at a Chinese university. The assessment and validation process involved a series of rigorous confirmatory factor analyses. The results validated the hypothesized five‐dimensional structure of academic writing self‐efficacy beliefs, including linguistic knowledge efficacy (LKE), self‐regulatory efficacy (SRE), information organization efficacy (IOE), writing performance efficacy (WPE), and rehearsal and memory efficacy (RME). Model comparisons confirmed the function of self‐efficacy beliefs as a multidimensional construct, in which the five factors were intercorrelated. The results of regression analysis demonstrated the significant predictive effects of five dimensions (i.e., LKE, SRE, IOE, WPE, and RME) on English as a foreign language (EFL) academic writing performance. The findings suggest that self‐efficacy beliefs can explain EFL academic writing performance. This study ends by providing theoretical and empirical implications for writing assessment and the possible enhancement of EFL academic writing. The Challenge Self‐efficacy belief is thought to develop students' academic writing performance, but does it in a foreign language context? Can we conceptualize and develop a theoretically vigorous scale with robust psychometric properties to evaluate students' self‐efficacy beliefs about academic writing in a foreign language context? This article extends previous work on assessing self‐efficacy beliefs and L2 writing by exploring the multifaceted structure of self‐efficacy beliefs in foreign language academic writing settings.