L2 motivational self system of Turkish EFL learners and their achievement attributions

This quantitative study aims to investigate the L2 Motivational Self System of preparatory school Turkish EFL students in terms of linguistic self-confidence, ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, and L2 learning experience (attitudes towards learning English). In order to investigate L2MSS of EFL students, Motivation Questionnaire consisting of 30 items was administrated. This study also aims at finding out EFL students' attributions on success and failure in learning English. To investigate the attributions of the participants, Achievement Attributions Questionnaire including 23 items was conducted. This study was carried out in the School of Foreign Languages at Mersin University in 2018-2019 academic years. Data of 274 participants was used for the analysis. To be able to respond the research questions of the study, both descriptive statistics and paired samples t-test were utilized from on SPSS. The results of the study suggest that preparatory school Turkish EFL students have strong linguistic self confidence and ideal L2 self. Also, students' overall L2 learning experience (attitudes towards learning English) is positive. However, ought-to L2 self does not have much significant contribution to their L2MSS. The results of the present study also reveal that preparatory school Turkish EFL students generally attribute not only their success but also their failure to internal and uncontrollable causes. Also, while their success in English is attributed to stable causes, their failure is attributed to unstable causes. Lastly, students' achievement is found as a factor both in their L2MSS and attributions in English.