Socio-demographic factors and speaking self-efficacy of prospective language teachers in Nigeria: assessing employability readiness

Abstract

Over the years, there has been a global concern about the speaking self-efficacy of aspiring language teachers, given that demonstrating confidence in speaking proficiency is essential to their profession and could also affect their employability readiness. This present study therefore investigated the speaking self-efficacy of prospective language teachers of French, Chinese, and German in Nigeria and the influence that their socio-demographic factors (age, gender and year of study) could have on their speaking self-efficacy. The sample size comprised 278 third language learners (French n=148; Chinese n=78; German n=52). Data obtained were subjected to t-test statistics, multiple regression and ANOVA. Findings revealed that the speaking self-efficacy beliefs of French, Chinese and German prospective language teachers, appear similar irrespective of their target language, though significant differences occurred only on beliefs that have to do with the capacity to concentrate while speaking in a foreign language. Further findings revealed that socio-demographic variables (age, gender and year of study) either individually or collectively did not significantly predict speaking self-efficacy across any of the language groups. However, item-level analyses showed that age, gender and year of study made limited and inconsistent impacts only on some specific speaking self-efficacy items. It was therefore concluded that speaking self-efficacy of prospective language teachers may be more strongly influenced by other psychological, experiential or instructional factors than by basic socio-demographic characteristics. The educational implications of the study were also highlighted.