ABSTRACT
Self-efficacy refers to individuals’ judgments of their ability to achieve performance goals. Self-efficacy beliefs impact students’ academic performance and influence their choices, perseverance, and resilience while engaging in an activity. Studies in L1 reading have revealed a link between students’ self-efficacy, their reading performance, and their engagement in reading activities. Self-efficacy also plays a role in L2 reading. This chapter investigates high school students’ reading self-efficacy in four different languages, namely, their L1 (Swedish or Finnish) and their three L2s (Swedish or Finnish depending on the L1, English, and German). The students completed a quasi-experimental test, involving a reading task and a task-related reading self-efficacy questionnaire. Both reading performance and self-efficacy were high in the participants’ L1. There were no correlations between reading performance and self-efficacy in the four languages in the L1 Swedish group. However, in the L1 Finnish group, strong positive correlations were found between L1 Finnish and L2 English, as well as between L2 Swedish and L2 German: high performance in one language was linked to high performance in the other. In addition, in the L1 Finnish group, high self-efficacy in L2 Swedish was correlated with high self-efficacy in all the other investigated languages. This chapter discusses possible reasons for these mixed findings.
