Is There a Relationship between Reception and Production Language Self-Efficacy?

Abstract

Learning a foreign language, such as Japanese, presents various challenges, involving psychological and cognitive aspects like self-efficacy and language learning anxiety. Self-efficacy, or the belief that one can complete certain tasks, significantly influences students' motivation and academic performance. Learners' engagement and communication willingness may be lowered by their fear of making mistakes and receiving unfavorable feedback. This study fills a research gap on self-efficacy among Japanese language learners in Malaysia. Investigating how learners perceive their production and reception self-efficacy in learning Japanese, as well as the connection between these two forms of self-efficacy, are the goals of this study. 171 Malaysian students studying Japanese participated in a quantitative survey. The instrument used was a 5-point Likert scale survey that was divided into two main sections: Section C carried 10 items on production self-efficacy (speaking and writing) and Section B had 9 items on reception self-efficacy (reading and listening). The findings show that students believe they are somewhat more capable of receiving than producing. Reception and production self-efficacy are positively and significantly correlated, suggesting that confidence in language comprehension is correlated with confidence in language production. The findings indicate that in order to increase student engagement and academic success in Japanese language instruction, educators and curriculum developers must create strategies that enhance both production and reception self-efficacy while lowering learners' anxiety about learning a new language.