The Impact of Individual Interest and Proficiency on Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Foreign Language Listening

Interest and self-efficacy beliefs are important components of motivational constructs that share some common characteristics and influence learning. Studies examining how these two relate to each other, however, appear to be few, especially in the area of language learning. To fill this gap, this study aims to investigate how interest in learning English and proficiency influence self-efficacy in listening, using a pre/post-design. This study focused on exploring the role of interest on the development of self-efficacy in 107 EFL Korean university students, with a low-intermediate English proficiency. Despite the participants' proficiency, they were found to possess and maintain relatively high interest over the English course they were enrolled in. Regression analyses revealed that, unlike at the beginning of the course, individual interest was found to be a significant factor in the development of advanced skill self-efficacy around the end of the semester, even predicting it more than proficiency did.