THE STUDY OF THE CORRELATION BETWEEN EFL STUDENTSʹʹ SELF-CONCEPT AND THEIR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN EFL CLASSROOMS

This study aims at investigating the relationship between the EFL intermediate studentsʹ self-concept and their academic achievement (grammatical knowledge). Accordingly, two groups of university students were selected as the low and high self - concept participants. This was done by their responses given to a questionnaire developed by Marsh (1990), to measure self - concept. After selecting the participants, the researcher utilized a standard Oxford Proficiency Test (OPT), measuring grammatical knowledge in the case of conditional sentences to evaluate some aspects of academic achievement of the participants at the end of the study. By analyzing the data were gathered from the participants. That is, to say the high self- concept students were found to be more inclined to proficient in grammatical aspect of English. It was found that there is a statistically significant correlation between the students self -concept and their academic achievement. Based on the findings of this study and many other studies conducted on this issue, foreign - language teachers should consider academic self - concept as a powerful motivating force that can optimize language learning processes and more importantly consider enhancing student self -concept as one of the primary goals of language education.