an investigation into the relationship among self-efficacy, self-esteem, test anxiety and final achievement of english literature students

the purpose of this study was to investigate the rela- tionship among self-efficacy, self-esteem, test anxiety and efl learners’ final achievement scores. a number of 72 students majoring in english literature at shiraz university participated in this study. three ques- tionnaires, general perceived self-efficacy (gpse) scale, rosenberg self-esteem scale (rses), and test anxiety questionnaire (taq), to- gether with a final achievement score were used. correlational analyses were run to determine the relationship among the variables. the ob- tained results revealed that self-esteem had a positive correlation with self-efficacy, while the relationship between self-esteem and test anxi- ety was seen to be non-significant. the same was true about the rela- tionship between self-efficacy and test anxiety. moreover, a moderate, positive, relation was observed between self-efficacy and students’ final scores. there was a positive correlation between self-esteem and stu- dents’ final scores. however, test anxiety and students’ final scores were negatively correlated. a linear regression analysis was also employed which showed that self-efficacy was the best predictor of students’ final achievement scores. the findings of pearson product-moment corre- lation revealed that, regarding the relationship among the variables, there was a difference between male and female students. finally, an independent samples t-test was run to show the effect of gender on the performance of the participants. male and female students did not significantly differ from each other in terms of self-efficacy, self-esteem, test anxiety, and final achievement scores