ATTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING: THE EFFECTS OF GENDER, AGE AND PERCEIVED SUCCESS

The main purpose of this study is to analyze Turkish tertiary level EFL learners’ attributions to success and failure and the effects of gender, age, and perceived success on their attributions. The results indicated that EFL learners respectively attributed interest, ability, task difficulty, effort, luck and the influence of teacher and school as influential factors of their success whereas they respectively rated effort, interest, the effect of teacher and school, ability, task difficulty, and luck as influential factors of their failure. Furthermore, they were more inclined to agree that internal reasons are responsible for their success while blaming external reasons for their failure. In addition, females seemed to attribute external factors more than their male counterparts and unsuccessful learners attributed more importance to effort and internal dimension than successful students. Finally, the study revealed that age was not an important factor in EFL learners’ attribution to success and failure.