Determination of English Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Sports Sciences Students

This study considers exploring self-efficacy beliefs of students from the Faculty of Sports Sciences by focusing on their awareness in four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) in foreign language learning. Most of the studies in language learning examine students from language classes, and correspondingly, language learning studies with other students from other disciplines are less researched. Emphasizing the prominence of students’ own beliefs and the impact of the beliefs in learning English as a target language, the study focuses on two research questions: first, what self-efficacy beliefs of students from the Faculty of Sports Sciences have on four foreign language learning skills, and second, to what extent there is a meaningful difference between demographic variables and students’ self-efficacy beliefs in achieving English four basic skills. The scarcity of the researches of learning English in sports discipline in Turkish universities and the observation of the anxiety and demotivation of students from sports departments inspired the researcher to investigate the connection between demographic features and self-efficacy beliefs. To achieve the objectives, both quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied. The findings displayed that Sports Sciences students mostly regard English as a course but not a communication tool to be needed in their future, and the students have more positive beliefs of self-efficacy in reading in English. Furthermore, while gender, class, and previous English experience variables do not have significant effects on English self-efficacy beliefs, the significant differences were determined with the department, father’s education level, mother’s education level, and English course grade variables.