Document Type : Original Article
Authors
Department of English Language Teaching, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran
Abstract
Affective considerations in language testing have occupied an outstanding place in education (Shohamy, 1982). Despite the importance of this issue, it appears that the test-takers' perceptions regarding motivation, self-efficacy beliefs and feelings in addition to their possible relationships have not been investigated in much detail. To narrow the gap, the primary aims of this paper were to explore Iranian non-English PhD students’ perceptions about motivation, self-efficacy beliefs and feelings. This paper also sought to investigate the association between motivation and self-efficacy beliefs, motivation and feelings, as well as self-efficacy beliefs and feelings. To collect the data, a Persian researcher-made questionnaire entitled "psychological consequences questionnaire" constructed and validated by Rezaeian, Seyyedrezaei, Barani, and Seyyedrezaei, (2020) was utilized. To ensure reliability, a pilot study was conducted on 60 participants; subsequently, the questionnaire was distributed among 252 students throughout Iran by online administration. The results of descriptive statistics using SPSS displayed that participants were intrinsically motivated to be prepared for this English Proficiency Test (EPT). Furthermore, participants showed the low level of self-efficacy beliefs towards their achievement in the test with high level of motivation. The results also illustrated a high amount of stress, test anxiety, hopeless, nervousness, families' stress or tension, amotivation as well as university dropout rate among participants. Spearman results confirmed that there was a significant correlation between motivation and self-efficacy beliefs, motivation and feelings, in addition to self-efficacy beliefs and feelings. Finally, the results were discussed and implications of the study were presented.
Keywords
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