Academic locus of control: Voluntary English preparation program students of a Turkish university

Academic locus of control (ALOC) has been an area of interest since it was developed by Trice (1985) as a construct. ALOC is concerned with the belief that one can control one's own academic success (Trice, 1985). English, in addition to being a language, is included as an academic course in the curriculum all over the world, which also makes it both an academic topic to question its effect on academic success and a concept whose relation to the area of ELT can be investigated. Also, its relations to attributions have also been investigated all over the world, as the attributions to success and failure might shed light on language learning process of individuals. However, very few studies have been conducted to see the relationship between the ALOC scores and attributions of students in a voluntary English preparation program. Thus, this study was conducted to investigate the ALOC scores of achievers and underachievers in the preparatory program they attended, if there was a significant relationship between the ALOC scores of achievers and underachievers, the attributions of those students to their success or failure and their extra activities to improve their English. To achieve this aim, a mixed-method study was carried out. Quantitative data about the ALOC scores of the students (N=184) in the program was gathered via an ALOC scale by Akın (2007) and analyzed via IBM SPSS 22.0 statistical package. For the qualitative part of the study, open-ended Google surveys with five open ended questions were sent to both achievers (N=36) and underachievers (N=30) with slightly changed versions. Data gathered via the surveys was coded, analyzed and deductions were made. The results of the quantitative phase of the study indicated that both achievers and underachievers had higher internal ALOC scores. Also, there were no significant relationships between the ALOC scores of achievers and underachievers. As for the qualitative part of the study, the students reported that they mostly decided to study in this program by their own will and that they mostly wanted to improve their English. The achievers mainly attributed their success to strategy use, effort and teachers, whereas the underachievers attributed their failure to lack of effort, program-related reasons and COVID-19 pandemic. Extra-curricular activities done by both groups of students were also investigated. In conclusion, all these and other key findings were discussed in relation to language teaching and learning at tertiary settings. In the light of all these then, implications and insights for further research were also presented.