The relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing performance in a university English preparatory course

Students have to deal with many problems while writing essays as it requires a lot of skills at once. Therefore, there are many points to consider during the writing process and how students feel about their writing skills is one of the most crucial factors that affects their writing performance; hence, writing self-efficacy should be investigated in detail. In addition, some students may feel less efficacious about their writing skills which can be caused by a number of problems they face while writing. Consequently, these problems should be understood by teachers to help students overcome them so that their writing performance and writing self-efficacy can be improved. The purpose of this study is to identify the preparatory school students' writing self-efficacy beliefs and the relationship between their level of writing self-efficacy and writing performance. It also aims to find out if there is a relationship between the students' writing self-efficacy and their level of English. Besides these, it further tries to investigate the problems the students face while writing essays. This study is both a descriptive and correlational study which lasted 7 weeks. 22 preparatory school students at Hasan Kalyoncu University, Gaziantep, were chosen by using convenience sampling strategy for the study. At the beginning of the study, a questionnaire with close–ended items was administered to see whether participants were aware of writing self-efficacy beliefs. The same questionnaire was administered at the end of the study to find out to what extent the students showed improvement in their writing self-efficacy beliefs in accordance with their level of English. The students' exam results were also acquired in order to understand whether there was a relationship between their level of writing self-efficacy and writing performance. Moreover, 7 students with lower level of writing self-efficacy were chosen and asked to write one essay by applying thinking aloud protocol in order to identify the problems they faced while writing essays. The data gathered from thinking aloud protocols were supported by analyzing the minute papers students wrote after writing the essay in order to learn more about their opinions about the writing process. The quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and the qualitative data were analyzed through content analysis. The analysis revealed that although students were not fully unaware of their writing self-efficacy beliefs at the beginning of the study, there was a positive change in their writing self-efficacy beliefs after completing one particular proficiency level. Moreover, it was found out that there was a significant positive correlation between the students' writing self-efficacy and their writing performance. Finally, the findings from thinking aloud protocols and minute papers showed that the students with lower level of writing self-efficacy faced a lot of basic problems in terms of brainstorming, introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, grammar and vocabulary and they were analyzed in depth to have a deeper understanding about their writing performance. Keywords: Writing self-efficacy, writing performance, writing problems, English preparatory school students.