The Relationship between the Academic Self-concept of Turkish ELT Students and their Reading Skills

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the academic self-concept (ASC) of Turkish ELT students and their reading skills. The study is conducted on 55 first grade English Language Teaching (ELT) university students including males and females and taking Reading Skills course in a foundation university in Istanbul, Turkey. The quantitative data is collected from three different ways. The first data about the academic self-concept of students is obtained from Academic Self-concept Scale by Liu and Wang (2005) consisting of two sub-scales; academic confidence and academic effort scales. The second data about students’ cognitive reading strategies is obtained from Metacognitive Reading Strategies Questionnaire (Taraban, Kerr and Rynearson, 2004). Lastly, reading skills of students’ were assessed through the exam scores taken in the reading skills course which evaluates their reading comprehension. The findings showed that there is a relationship between students’ academic self-concept and reading skills. The results and the relationship between academic self-concept and students’ reading skills are explained with related literature.