Japanese And Korean Learners' Perceptions Of Self-efficacy In Chinese

The conception "Perceived Self-efficacy" refers to the individual perception and belief for effectively controlling such aspects as its own life. It is found to mediate skilled performance, especially language development. This thesis reports on a study investigating self-efficacy of Japanese and Korean students in learning Chinese as a foreign language.The researcher developed a 22-item questionnaire based on 6 types of self-efficacy beliefs emerging from a comprehensive review of previous studies. This questionnaire was administered to a total of 53 Japanese and Korean students from East China Normal University and Donghua University.The result showed that Japanese and Korean learners generally exhibited low self-efficacy in learning Chinese. It indicated: 1. Japanese and Korean students' self-efficacy showed a high-low-high trend with the increase of studying period. And it declined with increasing age. Japanese learners exhibited lower efficacies than Koran learners while there was no significant difference. And also, there was no significant difference between students' gender. 2. Japanese and Korean students were most confident of their Chinese reading because of familiar cultural backgrounds and character systems. Their self-efficacy on spoken Chinese was quite low for their overuse of monitoring strategies whereas they were more confident on Chinese writing. As for Chinese listening, their self-efficacy was low when listening to nonstandard Chinese. To our surprise, they had much confidence on the communication with people in Chinese.Overall, the result confirmed the importance of self-efficacy in learning Chinese as a foreign language and offered teachers some teaching implications on exploring learners' attitude and abilities.