The Relationship among Self-Efficacy, Self-Regulation, Instrumental Motivation and Listening Comprehension Ability of Iranian EFL Learners

This study aimed at exploring the relationship among self-regulation, self-efficacy, instrumental motivation, and listening comprehension of Iranian EFL students. To this end, 153 participants were selected from among junior and senior EFL students of three universities in Iran. In order to collect the required data, the following instruments were used; the already-validated and reliable FCE listening test of Cambridge, and three Likert scale questionnaires, namely, self-regulation questionnaire developed and validated by O’neil and Herl (1998), self-efficacy questionnaire developed and validated by Rahimi and Abedini (2009), and an instrumental motivation questionnaire, developed and validated by Soodmand Afshar and Rahimi (2014). The results indicated that there was a significant relationship between (a) self-regulation and listening comprehension, (b) self-efficacy and listening comprehension, and (c) instrumental motivation and listening comprehension of Iranian EFL leaners. Besides, among independent variables of the study mentioned above, instrumental motivation was found to be a stronger predictor of listening comprehension ability of Iranian EFL leaners, followed by self-efficacy and self-regulation respectively. The implications of the study are presented and discussed in detail in the paper.