a study into the relationship between learned helplessness, locus of control, procrastination, and learning achievement among iranian high school efl students

Learned helplessness (lh), locus of control (loc), and procrastination are three concepts discussed mostly in social psychology which despite being discussed frequently in different contexts, they have been researched little in language learning research. this research project therefore tried to unravel the interrelationship between these phenomena with a focus on students achievement. the participants of this study were 182 public school students from three different provinces, i.e., golestan, semnan, and southern khorasan, iran, selected by convenience sampling strategy. in doing so, the participants were asked to fill out lh questionnaire adapted from sorrenti, et al., (2015), loc scale which was a dichotomous questionnaire adapted from a 21-item questionnaire (nowicki & strickland, 1973), and procrastination questionnaire adapted from tuckman (1991) procrastination scale. all these scales had been already translated into the participants lingua franca, i.e. farsi and tested for internal consistency by the researcher through a pilot study with 18 participants. the raw data were analyzed using spss (statistical package for social sciences) version 25. the results of spearman correlation tests indicated a significant relationship between lh and english achievement in the negative direction. however, loc and procrastination did not have a significant relationship with achievement. the results of linear regression analysis revealed that lh, loc and procrastination could not predict students’ achievement. furthermore, lh, loc, and procrastination all had significant relationships with one another and lh could be predicted using the other two. it can be understood that school administrators and teachers should pay more attention to lh and procrastination and the way they deal with these problems. besides, loc orientation must be tackled with caution because it is a part of students’ personality and not a negative issue.