Investigating Iraqi EFL College Students' Self-Directed Learning in English"

Abstract

        Self-directed learning (SDL), is an essential concept in learning, and, in a more extensive sense, student-centered learning. Considering the sophisticated nature of SDL, it has been underestimated and given a superficial meaning, i.e. self-study. With specific end goal to build up a deeper understanding and make utilization of the potential in SDL, this study discusses and puts forward a more significant meaning.

      The current study is an attempt to investigate Iraqi EFL college student's self-directed learning in English, thus the study aims at:

1-Investigating Iraqi EFL college students' self-directed learning in English,

2-Finding out the differences among the aspects of self-directed learning.

      Two hypotheses have been tested as follows:

1-Iraqi EFL college students are not able to use  self-directed learning

    abilities in learning English.

2-There are no statistically significant differences among the aspects of

        self- directed learning.

         The random sample of the current study consists of 132 students from the four academic stages of the English Department at  College of Education for Humanities / University of Diyala, for the academic year (2015-2016).

Four aspects of self-directed learning, namely ; General beliefs / Attitudes  , planning , practice and social communication aspects are concerned.

        In order to achieve the aims of this study and to assess its hypotheses , a questionnaire has been constructed for data gathering .The questionnaire covers eight scales that contain (39) items .The following four domains are : General beliefs / Attitudes (4) items , planning (18) items , practice (11) items and social communication (6) items.

      The  questionnaire is exposed to a jury of experts for the purpose of ascertaining its validity. Two methods are applied to calculate  the questionnaire reliability coefficient.