The Correlation Between Self-Efficacy and Speaking Performance of the Eleventh-Grade Students at SMAN 1 Palangka Raya

: Speaking is a common English skill that is still difficult to master in Indonesia. Especially in secondary school contexts, many students cannot use English for communication functions although they have studied it for several years. As the modern era demands the need for communication skills, this research was initiated to discover whether there is a correlation between self-efficacy and students’ speaking performance to help them improve their speaking skill. The study was conducted with a sample of 40 high school students from class XI MIPA 2 of SMAN 1 Palangka Raya. To collect the data, a self-efficacy questionnaire, speaking test, documentation of students’ latest speaking scores, and teacher’s notes of students’ activeness in English class were used. The data then was calculated and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25 Program. It was found there was a weak correlation (r-count = 0.333) between the two variables. The level of students’ self-efficacy was moderate, but their level of speaking ability was high. Therefore, the study concluded self-efficacy has little or no direct effect on students’ speaking performance. It is suggested that English teachers can continue to improve student’s speaking skill and further research is conducted to find more evidence of this phenomenon.


INTRODUCTION
Speaking skill is one of the four primary skills in English. Aside from listening, reading, and writing, speaking is generally perceived as the most important skill. Many think the ability to speak is the same as knowing the language because it is the very basic means of communication (Folse, as cited in Sanavi & Tarighat, 2014). According to Rao (2019), speaking English is a highly demanded communication skill in the modern era and hence shall be taught for the sake of students' improvement and well performance in real-life situations. However, speaking can be quite challenging for plenty of students since they need to master the other demanding components, such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, topical knowledge, and sufficient listening ability (Yoskapela, 2021).
Based on preliminary research in June 2022 and the internship program conducted in the period of March-May 2022 at SMAN 1 Palangka Raya, the writer found varied answers from random students when interviewing them about their speaking difficulties. While several students claimed to already have good speaking skills, others still admitted the opposite. The reasons collected ranged from lack of vocabulary and grammar skills, less learning motivation, and pronunciation difficulties, to fear of being judged and making mistakes. Regardless of the responses, the writer however found significant differences among the students which categorized them into two main classifications, namely efficacious and inefficacious students. The first type of students, the efficacious ones were relaxed and calm when they responded. They believe they already have sufficient skills to do speaking tasks whenever they were asked to. They also responded with an assertive tone and made eye contact when answering. Moreover, they were open to any questions about speaking and seemed to welcome suggestions. On the other hand, the inefficacious students were hesitant and agitated when responding. They seemed to avoid eye contact and did not want to be questioned further because they were afraid to be tested in place. Additionally, they tended to downplay their abilities by considering themselves as generally incapable of English subject. It was apparent from the gestures and answers received that those students were shy and anxious compared to the previous type (Fauzi & Asi, 2023).
Regarding the characteristics mentioned above, the writer realized this case was affected by the psychological state as the students were showing signs of low self-efficacy in speaking ability. Since speaking has always been seen as a complicated skill to learn, retaining the vocabulary and the grammar rules while figuring out the correct pronunciation and the right response to a certain social context might leave students with a feeling of helplessness. Maier & Seligman (2016) argued helplessness would generate passivity when connected to extensive factors which are hard to solve. In this case, it could lead the students to be silent and passive in learning when they were uncertain about themselves. Therefore, this condition needed an immediate solution as it otherwise would hinder students' development due to the lack of effort to continue practicing spoken English.
Low self-efficacy is one of the various psychological factors which influence students to have difficulty in mastering speaking skill. According to psychologist Bandura, selfefficacy is defined as an individual belief in a capacity to organize and perform necessary actions to accomplish particular situations (Bandura, as cited in Mastur, 2016). Concerning this, Rosaria (2017) accentuates everyone has control within themselves to manage their inner self and decisions, and self-efficacy is related to some types of negative feelings when a person feels insecure about their competencies. As a result, the lack of self-efficacy can affect students' speaking performance and their resilience in facing the problems of mastering other supporting components of speaking skill compared to those who have sufficient selfefficacy.
Due to the possible influence of self-efficacy can make, many researchers attempted studies from various contexts to investigate the effects of self-efficacy on students learning English as a Foreign Language (hereinafter EFL) and their speaking performance (e.g. Suharja, 2020;Ocarina, Anwar, & Marifah, 2021;Maharani, 2022). The studies reported that students have varying levels of self-efficacy from high, moderate, to low, and the factors which influence it. However, regardless of the factors, they concluded that the higher the students' self-efficacy, the better their performance in speaking.
Although the majority of studies seem proven a significant relationship between the two mentioned variables, some exceptions reported otherwise. For instance, Paraderawi (2017) stated that a highly efficacious student does not always show positive performance in their public speaking performance. In the following years, Andriani, Zuhairi, & Karimullah (2019) also claimed there was no significant relationship between students' speaking selfefficacy belief and their English speaking performance. This indicates there is an inconsistent relationship between the two variables and more research is needed to find a high correlation between self-efficacy and speaking performance.
In response to these issues, the writer was interested in conducting further research to find more evidence from EFL students in Indonesia, especially in Palangka Raya City, Central Kalimantan, where the related research is still very limited. The writer found most Vol. 3 Number 2 July 2023 Ebony -Journal of English Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Literature of the speaking self-efficacy research in the mentioned area is centered on higher education rather than at lower school levels, such as secondary school contexts. This is probably due to the low level of student's English proficiency, which makes it difficult to assess their speaking skills. Although communicative competence is encouraged in the Indonesian curriculum as one of the important skills in the 21st century, most of the English learning activities are still focused on grammar, reading, and writing because of the limited time for teaching and learning in class. Furthermore, the wide use of Indonesian as the language of instruction when teaching and learning English subjects has resulted in less emphasis being placed on developing English speaking skills and therefore making few studies done in this particular field.
Regarding the above concerns, the writer had the initiative to investigate the correlation between self-efficacy and students' speaking performance in SMAN 1 in Palangka Raya in the academic year 2022/2023. The research focuses to describe their level of self-efficacy by seeking important objective and subjective information from this study.

Research Design
This research applied a correlational research design with two variables as the focus of analysis, which consisted of students' self-efficacy and their speaking performance. In this research, students' speaking performance is expected to be high if they have a high level of self-efficacy, and vice versa.

Research Setting and Time
This research was carried out during the English class of XI MIPA 2 took place at SMAN 1 Palangka Raya in the academic year 2022/2023. There were three meetings in total to collect the data. The first meeting was held online through the WhatsApp group of the XI MIPA 2 class for distributing the questionnaire instrument on Monday, January 16, 2023, at 06.30 a.m. (WIB). Whereas the second and third meeting was held for the speaking test on-site in the XI MIPA 2 classroom for two following weeks on the same day and time, which was on Wednesday, 18 and 25 January 2023, from 06.45-08.15 a.m. (WIB).

Participants
The participants included in this research were 40 students of class XI MIPA 2 at SMAN 1 Palangka Raya in the academic year 2022/2023, consisting of 15 males and 25 females. The students were selected based on a purposive sampling technique with the consideration of showing verbal and behavioral characteristics of different self-efficacy levels during the observation and interview of the preliminary research.

Data Instruments, Collecting, Analysis Techniques
There were three data collection instruments the writer used to collect data, namely questionnaire, speaking test, and documentation. First, the writer applied an online selfefficacy questionnaire by Asakereh and Dehghannezhad (2015) through the link of a Google Form to attain main data and subjective information about students' perception of their speaking self-efficacy (high, moderate, or low). The questionnaire was translated into Indonesian to avoid misunderstanding and was used previously by Aryani (2018) in a similar study of speaking self-efficacy in seven senior high schools in Sukabumi Regency, Indonesia. The average score of students' self-efficacy was obtained by following the ordinal number or ranking rules. That is, the more positive the value, the higher the number goes. The following is the interpretation of students' level of self-efficacy based on ranking: Strongly Agree = 5 (Very High) Agree = 4 (High) Neutral = 3 (Moderate) Disagree = 2 (Low) Strongly Disagree = 1 (Very Low) Furthermore, the objective information about students' speaking performance was derived from a speaking test on descriptive text, which was based on the tenth-grade basic competency number 4.4.2 from the 2013 Curriculum made by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture. The speaking test was conducted in the form of an oral presentation and two meetings, consisting of a different topic for each: (1) describing a person, and (2) describing a place. For scoring the test, two examiners assessed the students directly, the writer and the English teacher of XI MIPA 2. The scoring was based on a speaking rubric adapted from Ningrum, Husna, & Tanjung (2017) as applied by Aryani (2018) and the score classification adopted from Heaton which was also used in a similar study of speaking selfefficacy by Syarif (2018). After that, the writer classified participants according to their belonging on the indicators of speaking skill.
Finally, the writer also utilized documents from the authorized English teacher which were taken from October to November to confirm the findings, consisting of students' previous speaking scores from different types of topics (in this case there were plan and poem) and the teacher's notes of students' activeness in English class. To collect the data, the writer used a crosscheck table to make sure the data was complete and compared the overall scores of self-efficacy and speaking performance side by side with the previous speaking scores and the teacher's notes in the form of tabulation.
As for analyzing the data, the writer did the Pearson Reliability test to confirm the scorings both from the writer and the English teacher, Shapiro-Wilk and Lilliefors normality tests, as well as Spearman Bivariate Correlation using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 Program. Then, the writer interpreted the findings starting from the normality tests by comparing the percentages of both data with 0.05 (α = 5%) to make a decision based on the following rules: 1 There is a correlation between X and Y, but the value is very weak or very little so it is ignored or it is considered no correlation in this rating.
0.20-0.399 There is a correlation between X and Y but it is weak or little. 0.40-0.599 There is a moderate correlation between X and Y.
0.60-0.799 There is a strong correlation between X and Y.
0.80-1.000 There is a very strong correlation between X and Y.

Students' Self-Efficacy Scores and Statistics
From the statistics data, it was found that the average score of students' self-efficacy was 3.0460. The median score of students' self-efficacy was 3.0200. The mode or the scores that often appeared were 2.14, 3.00, and 3.32. The highest score of self-efficacy was 4.86 while the lowest score was 2.00. The standard deviation was 0.65435 with a variance 0.428. By comparing the data to the level classification of self-efficacy, it can be concluded that the average self-efficacy of class XI MIPA 2 students was moderate. For clear data visualization, in the following figure, data was represented.

Students' Speaking Scores and Statistics
There were only 37 students in total who were able to take the test in both meetings due to other conditions, such as sickness and heavy rain. The participants who were not included in the test were S-13, S-18, and S-32. Therefore, to acquire matching data results, the writer rejected the data from the three participants in the next analysis steps. As a result of statistical data on students' speaking performance, the average score on the speaking test was 79.8649. The median score was 80. The mode was 75. The highest score on the speaking test was 95, whereas the lowest score was 60. The standard deviation was 9.68149 and the variance was 93.731. About the previous scoring classification, the data indicated the speaking performance of class XI MIPA 2 students was at a high level. See this figure below for clearer data representation.

Comparison Data of Students' Self-Efficacy and Speaking Scores
After both the data on students' self-efficacy and speaking scores had been collected, the writer compared the data with the documents she had retrieved from the English teacher of XI MIPA 2 in October and November. This was done to make sure the data accuracy and consistency before and after the research was conducted. The following table represented the overall data of students' speaking scores and self-efficacy. In the table above, there were only several students whose activeness in the class was marked by the teacher. The students were noted and divided either into two conditions, generally active and very active (proactive). According to the teacher, students who were tagged as active students showed visible effort during the class which was significant compared to the others who were not. For instance, this effort could be shown by the way students actively lead discussions in their group, write sample phrases or sentences on the whiteboard, ask questions and give opinions in English, voluntarily read certain texts in English, or even become spokespersons of their group presentation. In addition, the active students were recorded to have moderate to very high self-efficacy. However, a few of them did not always have consistently good speaking scores all the time. The same goes for passive students who have low to moderate self-efficacy.

Inter-Rater Reliability Testing of Speaking Scores
The correlation between the data scores by the writer and the English teacher was 0.943. Meanwhile, the Sig. value was 0.000 < 0.05, which indicated there was a significant correlation between the two data. By comparing the data to the Pearson interpretation table, it could be concluded that the reliability of speaking scores was highly reliable.

Normality Testing of Self-Efficacy and Speaking Scores
According to the analysis, the data on speaking and self-efficacy scores were normally distributed. The Lilliefors test resulted in the Sig. value was 0.200 > 0.05 for self-efficacy scores and 0.156 > 0.05 for speaking scores. Meanwhile, the Shapiro-Wilk test resulted in the Sig. value was 0.202 > 0.05 for self-efficacy scores and 0.070 > 0.05 for speaking scores.

The Correlation of Self-Efficacy and Speaking Scores
The correlation coefficient (r-count value) was 0.333, which indicated that there was a positive correlation between the two variables. When compared with the Pearson Correlation Interpretation, it could be interpreted that there was a weak correlation (0.20-0.39) between X and Y variables. Meanwhile, for data visualization, the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) of linear regression = 0.158, which means 15.8 percent of the variance in the Y variable is predicted from the X variable. Finally, for the significance number, the interpretation was based on the two hypotheses as follows: 1) Null Hypothesis (H 0 ): There is no significant correlation between self-efficacy and English-speaking performance of the eleventh-grade students at SMAN 1 Palangka Raya in the academic year 2022/2023. 2) Alternative Hypothesis (H a ): There is a significant correlation between self-efficacy and the English-speaking performance of the eleventh-grade students at SMAN 1 Palangka Raya in the academic year 2022/2023.
According to the Spearman Correlation interpretation, the Sig. (2-tailed) = 0.044 < 0.05 meaning H 0 was rejected and H a was accepted. Therefore, there was a significant correlation between students' self-efficacy and their speaking performance. It could be concluded that if the level of self-efficacy increases, the students' speaking scores would also likely increase in return. The following was data visualization for the correlation between the two variables.

Indirect Effect of Students' Self-Efficacy on Speaking Performance
Based on the data description, the correlation analysis resulted in H 0 being rejected, which means there was a significant correlation between students' self-efficacy and their speaking performance. However, the correlation between the two variables was weak (r-count = 0.333 > 0.20; and 0.333 < 0.39) which could indicate other factors dominantly influenced students' speaking performance besides their self-efficacy. In other words, students' selfefficacy did not directly affect students' ability in performing speaking. This was shown by the difference between the mean scores of students' moderate self-efficacy (3.0460) and their high speaking scores (79.8649, also equals 80). Referring to Heaton (as cited in Syarif, 2018), the writer expected the students' speaking scores should be around 65 to 74 if their self-efficacy was average. Conversely, thirty students did not fall into this category with 29 students scoring higher and 1 student scoring lower than that.
Although the analysis did not share the same result, according to the literature review, the writer concluded this research has a more similar case to Aryani's (2018). In her research, Aryani reported that high school students in Sukabumi Regency had high self-efficacy, but low speaking scores. As explained by Schwarzer & Renner (Schwarzer & Renner, 2000;Zhou, 2015;as cited in Aryani, 2018), this situation could occur because of the two-phase model of self-efficacy, which consists of action self-efficacy (motivation phase) and coping self-efficacy (volition phase). It was suspected that high school students of Sukabumi might have a high level of action self-efficacy, but a low level of coping self-efficacy. Therefore, they only had high confidence in getting started, but failed to keep pursuing their goals. In contrast to that, this research considered students of class XI MIPA 2 at SMAN 1 Palangka Raya to be in the opposite situation. The writer assumed that XI MIPA 2 students tend to have moderate self-efficacy for action, but high self-efficacy for coping. In other words, students in the beginning had mediocre anticipation for their potential success, but when faced with real problems they pushed themselves harder to persist in difficult situations. This supported why the students had high speaking scores but moderate self-efficacy.
Students' efforts to cope with difficulties were shown during the speaking test was taken. Several students who seemed to forget some risky vocabularies tend to use basic or safe words with longer explanations to convey their message carefully and avoid grammatical mistakes. In addition, they also used simple figurative imagery for describing and connecting an object with their feeling or imagination just when they were about to fail to describe it in literal form. Therefore, they could keep producing various vocabularies and keep their flow while sounding casual at the same time. Moreover, at the beginning of the test, the students quickly chose topics that crossed their minds and were easy to describe. For instance, the topics variance was their celebrities, parents, siblings, close friends, classmates, hometown, family house, classroom, library, historian place, canteen, etc. The information they described was familiar and close to their reach. Although few of them looked nervous during the test, the students managed to keep themselves calm by controlling their breathing, and distracting their attention so as not to look at the examiners directly, such as looking at the ceiling or other close objects. On top of that, the choice of their favorite topics also helped them to feel better instead of being nervous. These efforts proved that Bandura's self-efficacy theory (as cited in Sharma & Nasa, 2014) was valid and that there was a strong commitment from students to achieve their goals by using as many strategies as possible, regardless of their speaking ability which was already good.
As mentioned earlier, it was suspected other possible factors might influence students' speaking performance. First of all, the writer assumed this could happen because the students might have other beliefs like risk perception and outcome expectancies besides self-efficacy. Schwarzer & Hamilton (2020) explained when an individual is at risk for failure and find more positive outcomes in completing a task; they will be motivated to change their behavior to achieve their goal. This might be true for XI MIPA 2 students because they were being monitored by the English teacher during the test, which could generate fear of being labeled as incompetent and potentially affect their overall score in the English subject at the end of the semester. The second factor, however, was because there was a weakness in the method of filling out the questionnaire. Despite the ease and practicality of distributing it online, the writer suspected the students might have different moods when filling out the questionnaire at different times and places which could affect the actual results. Although the students were being reminded to return the questionnaire immediately during the day, there were still several students who submitted their responses at night due to absence from class, school activities, or just mere procrastination. This indirect monitoring of the students might cause them to be less serious in answering the questionnaire and thus produce conflicting data on students' self-efficacy and speaking scores. Lastly, the contradictory data might also be caused by the low motivation of learning English in general since the XI MIPA 2 students mostly struggled with mathematics and science as their main mandatory subjects. Hence, they did not feel obligated to have the ability to speak English as well as language and culture class students. This led the students to use English just for fun instead of using it seriously for academic benefits. Additionally, since the students were from the mathematics and science class program, it was very likely that most students regarded their strength lies in the skills and knowledge of the subjects concerned, rather than in the English subject.

Students' Activeness and Inconsistent Data of Speaking Scores
Based on the data presented in Table 2, there were some incompatibilities between the data provided by the English teacher and the research findings. First, students' activeness in the class did not always indicate the students to be highly efficacious in speaking skill. Most of them had moderate if not high or very high self-efficacy. It was noted 14 active students had moderate to high self-efficacy and four proactive students had moderate to extremely high self-efficacy. The contrast in the data comparison is possible due to the self-efficacy instrument which was specifically domain in speaking skill. Meanwhile, the students' activeness as stated by the English teacher was general and manifested in various activities which involved more than just speaking in class. Thus, it could be most likely that these notes would support the self-efficacy data of the students if only it was centered on the overall English skills.
Next, for the data comparison of speaking scores, there were a few assumptions about why the inconsistency could occur from time to time. According to the English teacher, the speaking test on the topic of future plans was carried out in dialogue, while the topic of poems was carried out in monologue. The writer suspected the lower scores on the topic of future plans might be due to the differences in students' personality and characteristic traits. Some students might be more comfortable being tested individually while others might be comfortable in partners. Therefore, personal aspects such as different attention spans or anxiety levels of each student when doing a task alone or together could also influence how well they performed speaking and achieved different results. As for the speaking test on poems, the data was shown to be the least good speaking scores the students achieved among the other scores of future plans and descriptive text. Even though, certainly, there were also exceptions for some students who obtained good speaking scores. Again, this proved there might be students' personal preferences and strengths in the various topics of speaking tests. As different individuals, some students might have a greater interest in learning poems than the rest. Additionally, their strengths or weaknesses in literature could also affect their speaking performance on poems as this topic required different assessment criteria like finding the right rhythms and rhymes within every line of the verses. In this matter, students were challenged in certain areas of pronunciation like word stress and intonation which were strongly influenced by their Indonesian or ethnic accent. Furthermore, English literature including poems also required students to have artistic merit to deliver their speech beautifully and evoke listeners' emotions rather than to convey it as plain messages.