Self-Efficacy and Critical Thinking as the Predictors of Autonomous Language Learning in EFL Contexts

The thrust of the present study was to systematically investigate the relationship between EFL learners’ Self-Efficacy(SE), Critical Thinking (CT), and their Autonomy (AU). To this end, 196 male and female EFL learners, within the age range of 20 to 30 (Mage = 25) were selected based on convenience sampling strategy. They were asked to fillin three questionnaires, namely Sherer, Maddux, Mercadante, Prentice-Dunn, Jacobs, and Rogers’ SE Scale (1982), Honey’s CT questionnaire (2000), and Zhang and Li’s Learner AU questionnaire (2004). Since the assumptions of normality of distribution were violated for the scores of AU and SE, in order to findout the relationships among the variables, the non-parametric Spearman Rank Order Coefficientof Correlation was conducted. The results revealed that there was a significantand positive correlation between AU and CT, AU and SE, and CT and SE. Furthermore, a regression analysis revealed that SE has the largest β coefficient(β = 0.519, t = 7.65, p = 0.0005). This is to say that SE makes the strongest statistically significantunique contribution to explaining AU. CT turned out to be the second significantpredictor of AU scores (β = 0.186, t = 2.75, p = 0.007). The study concludes with a discussion on the obtained results followed by presenting some implications for EFL teachers, learners, and syllabus designers.