EFL students’ profiles of English reading self-efficacy: Relations with reading enjoyment, engagement, and performance

Abstract

Reading self-efficacy in both first language (L1) or second language (L2) contexts has attracted increasing attention from researchers and practitioners in the past decades. However, prior self-efficacy studies have mainly adopted variable-centered approaches, and a global index of reading self-efficacy was created in these studies. Individual differences in reading self-efficacy and how they are associated with other learning factors remain under-explored particularly in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The purpose of this article was therefore to employ a person-centered approach to examine different patterns of EFL students’ English reading self-efficacy as identified by latent profile analysis (LPA) among 361 Chinese university students. We conducted analyses of variance to examine the differences in English reading enjoyment, engagement and reading test performance across profiles. LPA results revealed four distinct English reading self-efficacy profiles: (1) low English reading self-efficacy, (2) moderate English reading self-efficacy, (3) medium-low English reading self-efficacy, (4) high English reading self-efficacy. While reading enjoyment and engagement were found to vary significantly between each pair of the four reading self-efficacy profiles, significant differences in reading performance only occurred among profiles of high vs. moderate/medium-low/low, and moderate vs. medium-low/low English reading self-efficacy. Students from medium-low and low English reading self-efficacy profiles did not differ significantly in their reading performance.