A Dynamic Model of EFL Learners' Personal Best Goals, Resilience, and Language Achievement

Abstract

One of the objectives of any educational endeavor is helping students to adopt a set of personal goals for their achievement. This is known as personal best (PB) referring to personalized goals or standards of excellence that match or exceed one's prior best in the academic context. It is also believed that PB goals can fluctuate in line with other academicassociated factors. The aim of the present study is to scrutinize these goals in association with students' resilience and language achievement. In other words, this study elucidated how English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' PB and resilience influence language achievement. To do so, 173 students studying in two private language institutes and a university completed two questionnaires. The former was PB scale designed by Martin (2006) measuring specific, challenging, competitively self-referenced, and self-improvement goals. It was then translated to Persian and validated by the present researchers. The latter was the resilience scale containing five dimensions of perceived happiness, empathy, sociability, persistence, and self-regulation. The questionnaire was designed and validated by Kim and Kim (2016) and then translated to Persian and validated in this study. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated the validity of the Persian versions of the scales. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that PB is a positive and significant predictor of resilience. Moreover, it was found that language achievement is predicted by both PB and resilience.

Students with Socioeconomic Disadvantages who have Academic Success in Language: Examining Academic Resilience in South America

“…This coincides with the statements of García-Vesca and Domínguez-de La Ossa [14], who relieve feelings of self-reliance as a central individual element in the development of resilient processes. This would be related to what was stated by Lee and Stankov [20] and Najafzadeh et al [21] who link socio-educational resilience with prospective judgments about their own abilities and with confidence in the generation of personal goals, relevant representations to enhance self-perceptions of academic effectiveness. Confidence in reading and the sense of self-efficacy in language skills seem to be more prone to resilient development, the earlier the child has contact with the various language processes [36].…”

“…Studies that emphasize the importance of strategies to support the academic development of students from disadvantaged backgrounds [21,34,35,37,38], suggest an affirmative answer to the question regarding supporting the resilience in students in adverse socioeconomic situations. These are contextual-relational variables, mainly relevant to teachers and/or the community, that can be addressed, modified and/or redirected by each school.…”

“…Some considerations on values could be the relational display of respect and trust in the classroom, promoted by teaching practice, coinciding with the results of Maier et al [43], who focused on protective factors in the classroom. González and Delgado [37], Hudson et al [38], Najafzadeh et al [21] and Li et al [40] also consider that the promotion of participation and socio-emotional support in special intervention programs is complementary to the curriculum.…”

“…They identified some related to personality traits, the curriculum, school climate, the emotional environment, etc. The students' prospective judgments of their own abilities and their projections, teaching support [21], and classroom climate were valued as the most influential factors for good academic performance. Also, teachers' resilience was proposed by Katsantonis [22] as a central factor anchored in self-efficacy as a mediating variable of the relationship between school climate and work.…”

“…The authors refer to interpersonal emotional selfregulation as an important prerequisite for generating social connections of high resilient value, such as developing proper teacher-student support. This is relevant as long as educational support is considered as an inciting factor in the development of personal goals [21].…”