Speaking skills have been considered to be the most challenging language skill for students to acquire. Reasons for students’ failure to develop their speaking skills vary. However, it appears that many freshmen are usually afraid of making mistakes in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. To succeed, they need to develop their own self-belief system so as to allow them to take necessary risks to develop their speaking skills. In other words, they should have self-efficacy so they can train their speaking skills well and accomplish their goals.

In this research, the researcher intended to answer two research questions, namely: “How was the students’ speaking self-efficacy among the first-year ELESP students best described?” and “To what extent did the learning experiences nurture their self-efficacy?”.

The research used a mixed method. In answering those two research questions, the researcher used a survey and interview to collect the quantitative and qualitative data. The participants of this research were 38 first-year students of the English Language Education Study Program in the academic year 2022/2023 at Sanata Dharma University.

The findings of this research showed that most students were conscious about their low self-efficacy in speaking ability. The researcher discovered that the students’ self-efficacy was not that high due to their very first experience as the first-year students in English Study Program. It also found that most students nurtured their self-efficacy by their learning experiences. Generally, the stronger their willingness to learn from their experiences and believe in their ability, they will succeed at speaking English.

Keywords: learning experiences, perception, self-efficacy, speaking