ENHANCING ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY OF WORKERS, LURKERS AND SHIRKERS AMONG UNDERGRADUATES STUDYING ENGLISH

Abstract

Universities offering English as first degree in the United Kingdom aim to provide students with education and learning, intellectual, professional and transferable skills expected to make them useful in the environments. Achieving these aims requires students' active participation in lectures and seminars as a space for developing meaningful learning. However, lecturers often observe that some students actively participate in pair and group work and note taking but are very reluctant to ask and answer questions during lectures. This paper presents an exploratory study that uses students' needs analysis reflecting their participatory attitudes in class as a lens to understand and design strategies for developing critical thinking among first year undergraduates studying English in a university in the United Kingdom. The methodology is mixed and as a first step, thirty free response questionnaires were administered among volunteers who are speakers of English as a first language and taking a module called Language and context. Results from the content analysis of the questionnaires suggest that attitudes may be linked to aspects of learner self-efficacy during interaction. Results from content analysis provide a lead-on for proposing a learner-centered plan of action designed to exercise critical thinking skills, encourage reflective learning, and help students to be more mindfully involved in linguistic analysis as lurkers, workers and shirkers during lectures and seminars.