the relationship between locus of control and iranian efl university students’ beliefs about language learning

this exploratory study aimed to investigate a possible relationship between learners’ beliefs about language learning and one of their personality traits; that is,locus of control (loc). both variables, beliefs and locus of control, are assumed to influence the language learning process. the internal control index (ici) and the beliefs about language learning inventory (balli) were administered to 151 ma level students of tefl and translation at three universities: of ferdowsi university of mashhad, imam reza international university, and birjand university. descriptive statistics, pearson correlation, wilcoxon-mann-whitney test, and linear regression analysis were used to analyze the collected data. the results of the data analyses yielded the following four findings: (1) learners had positive and realistic beliefs about language learning, (2) there was a low relationship between learners loc and their beliefs about language learning, (3) there were no significant differences between internalizers and externalizers regarding beliefs about language learning except for balli items of 10, 11, 12, 19, and 32. finally, (4) loc best predicted learners academic achievement. the present findings indicated that although beliefs are complex and multi-dimensional in nature, they are mostly universal and learners with different loci of control hold rather similar beliefs about language learning, consonant with current thinking in foreign language pedagogy. the study suggested the need for further research regarding alternative contextual, methodological, and population variables. keywords: locus of control, learners beliefs about language learning