On the Relationship between Imposter Phenomenon and Language Proficiency: A Case Study of Shiraz University Non-Major MA Candidates

According to Heshmat (2000), as many as 70 percent of all professionals have experienced the feeling of being a fraud in relation to their work or personal lives while those people who suffer from the imposter phenomenon are usually highachievers. Regarding this important point, the objectives of the present study are three-folded: First, the study aimed at investigating the relationship between the Imposter Phenomenon (IP) and Language Proficiency (LP) among the Iranian nonmajor MA candidates. Second, the study intended to check the effect of age, gender, and also major on both the imposter phenomena and language proficiency. Finally, the present study tended to investigate which of the above-mentioned variables predict the language proficiency or imposter phenomena. Participants were 146 Shiraz University Non-English major students who first took a language proficiency test, devised by the experts in the field of TEFL at Shiraz University, and then filled out a questionnaire on imposter phenomenon (Harvey, 1982). The obtained data was then analyzed by both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that there is no significant relationship between IP and LP. Also among the variables of the study namely, age, gender, and major, age and major were the factors which could predict the language proficiency of the language learners.