Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Turkish Academics' Self-efficacy Beliefs in their Spoken English

Abstract

Academics are known as individuals designing and conducting scientific research and they are to hold problem-solving skills, use scientific methods, carry out research, and publish at a global level. That said, they may encounter problems while performing the actions mentioned above due to a lack of foreign language proficiency, which interferes with sharing their knowledge with the others in the international arena. Taking that into consideration, this study aims to scrutinize the self-efficacy beliefs of Turkish academics regarding their oral communication in English. For this purpose, the data were collected through e-mails, and a total of 352 academics working in the departments of educational sciences participated in the study. Qualitative (document analysis) and quantitative research (survey) methods were used together in the study. The scale A Self-efficacy Instrument for Academics’ Oral Communication in a Foreign Language developed by Ozer, Cakir & Uzun (2019), was utilized in the quantitative data collection phase. The findings were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that the self-efficacy scores of academics with respect to their oral communication in English showed no significant difference in terms of their department, academic title, academic experience, and age variable. It also turned out that there is a significant difference between self-efficacy belief scores and experience abroad, current language exam scores, and involvement in academic events abroad. As a result of the document analysis, it was uncovered that the number of studies, especially those that examine foreign language use, is limited. It is believed that the present study will contribute to the existing literature.