A Path-Analytic Study into Foreign Language Enjoyment, Willingness to Communicate in English, Self-Efficacy, and Academic Achievement

This paper reports on a study that intended to (a) reveal the extent of English Foreign Language(EFL) learners' foreign language enjoyment (FLE), their self-efficacy, and willingness to communicate (WTC) in English, and (b) try out a hypothesized model to find out whether FLE, self-efficacy and academic achievement predict learners WTC in English. A total of 257 tertiary-level Turkish EFL students participated in the study. The data were collected through three quantitative scales to elicit the constructs in question as well as the participants' English achievement test scores. Analysis of the data included the use of descriptive statistics to present the students' WTC, FLE, and self-efficacy levels while a path analysis was performed to verify the hypothesized model. The results showed that the participants had a moderate level of WTC and self-efficacy, and a favorable amount of FLE. More prominently, path analysis results revealed that FLE and English achievement predicted self-efficacy, and self-efficacy predicted WTC to a significant extent. In addition, FLE and English achievement indirectly affected WTC through the mediation of self-efficacy. FLE was also found to be a significant predictor of English achievement.