Exploring locus of control orientations of Turkish EFL learners and the relationship between attributional retraining and academic achievement: An application of an educational training programme

Abstract

The focus of this research is oninvestigating learnersí attributions with respect to theirsuccess or failure in an EFL setting with different variables such as gender, academic leveland socio-economic status of the participants. A further concern was to evaluate the potentialcontribution of an attribution retraining intervention program to improve participantsí internallocus of control, and finally, to find out whether this attribution retraining interventionprogram has an effect on academic achievement.This experimental study was designed based on a pretest-posttest model and wasconducted with the participants in School of Foreign Languages at Pamukkale Universityduring 2013-2014 academic year.The study conducts an attribution retraining intervention program in addition to aquestionnaire, semi- structured pre- and post-interviews, self reports. An eight-week trainingprogram on attributional retraining intervention program was administered to an experimentalgroup of 20 learners who were purposively selected.The findings of the questionnaire were analyzed through SPSS 20 Program (StatisticalProgram for Social Sciences) and the pre- and post interviews were analyzed throughqualitative content analysis.Significant differences were found between experimental and control groups and alsosuccessful and unsuccessful students within the experimental group. Participants attributedtheir success to internal attributions rather than external ones, whereas they attribute theirfailure to both internal and external ones. No significant gender differences were observedfrom the findings. Socio-economic status of the participants was another important concern of the study. It was found that participants with low socio-economic status attribute their failureto external attributions more than the participants with good or average socio-economic status.Findings of the study were discussed in the light of the relevant literature and somesuggestions for further studies were made.Key Words: Attribution, Attribution retraining, Academic Achievement, Socio-economicStatus