Measuring Self-Perceptions of Oral Narrative Competencies and Anxiety in the EFL Context

Introduction. Due to a considerable lack in empirical efforts and appropriate instruments, and theoretically rooted in a cognitive-motivational perspective on academic personality development, the present study analyzes a questionnaire for measuring EFL learners' self-perceptions of oral narrative competencies and perceived anxiety concerning oral narrative classroom situations. Method. In a sample of N = 256 German ninth-graders from 9 inner-city grammar schools this newly developed instrument was administered along with related self-belief and performance measures and, for the purpose of discriminant validation, also with matched measures in the native language German. Results. Principal components analysis led to the formation of two subscales measuring perceived competency and anxiety. Both subscales provided psychometrically sufficient and valid data. Especially, structural equation modeling analyses evidenced the L2 self-perceptions of oral narrative competence and anxiety to be considerably stronger related to English than to German belief and performance variables. The relations between L2 and L1 constructs mainly turned out to draw a domain-specific pattern. Additional analyses of variance could verify significant gender differences in the anxiety scores indicating that female learners tended to report a higher degree of anxiety concerning oral narrative classroom situations. Furthermore, self-perceptions of narrative competencies could be clearly differentiated from the overall English self-concept variable. Discussion. The results could confirm the multidimensional and task-specific feature of academic self-beliefs in the EFL context. Accordingly, both measurement scales might serve as research instruments for further analyses of EFL learners' cognitive-motivational orientations in a specific competence area of oral language use.