Abstract
The present study aimed for better understanding of the interactions between task complexity and students’ self-efficacy beliefs and students’ use of learning strategies, and finally their interacting effects on task performance. This investigation was carried out in the context of Chinese students learning English as a foreign language in a university in China. The participants were 78 second-year university students (mean age = 20.9 years). This study used a repeated-measures design with task complexity as the within-participants factor, and task sequence as the between-participants factor. Results indicated a significant task effect for self-efficacy beliefs and task performance, and a significant interaction effect of sequence with task complexity for learners’ self-efficacy beliefs in learning for both task versions, learners with higher self-efficacy beliefs had better task performances than learners with lower self-efficacy beliefs. The results also revealed a strong correlation between self-efficacy and the use of learning strategies for both tasks.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Ms Na Wu, for her assistance in the data collection, and the students who participated in this study. We also thank the reviewers for their insightful comments, which have greatly improved the clarity of the paper.
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Wu, X., Lowyck, J., Sercu, L. et al. Self-efficacy, task complexity and task performance: Exploring interactions in two versions of vocabulary learning tasks. Learning Environ Res 15, 17–35 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-012-9098-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-012-9098-2