The Impact of Teacher-Student Interaction and Academic Self-Concept on EFL Learners' Academic Achievement

Abstract

While previous academic achievement studies have investigated a wide range of cognitive variables, certain non-cognitive variables such as teacher-student interaction and academic self-concept in relation to academic success have remained under-researched. To this end, a coefficient correlation research method was used to observe the academic self-concept, and the interaction between teacher and student features which had been identified as having significant roles in English students’ academic achievement. The participants of the study consisted of 218 Iranian EFL university learners, with an age range of 18 to 45. Structural equation modeling hypothesis-testing procedures demonstrated that there exists a reasonable fitness between the data and the model (χ2 = 0.37, GFI = 0.99, CFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.01). It was confirmed that the amount of student and teacher relationships meaningfully and directly affected EFL students' academic success (r = 0.35, p = 0.45). Moreover, academic self-concept was known to be a significant factor in improving students' achievement (r = 0.24, p = 0.32). The obtained results also indicated the mediating role of learners' academic self-concept in enhancing learners' academic achievement via increasing the interaction between students and their teacher. The fundamental role of psychosomatic features, comprising of students and teacher relations and academic self-concept to foreign language students’ educational success was authenticated. The outcomes of this empirical study have some implications for educational settings.

Keywords

• academic achievement
• academic self-concept
• correlational method
• structural equation modeling
• teacher-student interaction