English language achievement among Ethiopian public secondary school students: associated factors

This study investigated attribution related factors in English language performance among grade nine students (n=147) in Ethiopia. Three public secondary schools were selected from Adama town using census sampling techniques. Sixty attribution items (that is, had 30 items of perceived reasons for success, and 30 items for perceived reasons for failure) were developed by the research team. The degree of influence for each item was scaled on a 5 point Likert scale ranging from unimportant to highly important. A reliability test of the attribution survey showed a value of 0.80 Cronbach Alpha. Descriptive statistics, principal component analysis (PCA), and linear regression analysis were carried out to investigate the association between students’ English language performance and attribution related factors. PCA of 30 items on attribution for success and PCA on 30 items for failure were reduced into 8 items and 7 items respectively. Following the PCA, a linear regression analysis revealed that among the 8 variables, only 3 variables: student effort, language ability, and a good teaching practice, accounted for overall English language achievement. A significant regression equation was found F (8, 64) = 36.687, p <.000, with R2 of .82, for these perceived reasons. Accordingly, a 10% increase in students’ effort as a single factor was associated with 5.17%, (b=0.517, p-value= 0.012, a=0.05) in improved achievements. Similarly, a 10% increase in student language ability as a single factor was associated with 5.03%, (b= 0.503, p-value= 0.007, a=0.05) in improved achievements. In the same way, a significant regression equation was found for failure reasons F (7.66) =, p <.000 with an R2 of 0.470. Linear regression analysis revealed that teachers’ good teaching practice as a single factor was associated with increased student achievement by 9.5%, (b= 0.95, p-value= 0.001, a=0.05) in improved achievements. A 10% decrease was due to poor quality of teaching practice, which was related to decrease in students achievement and increase in task difficulty was also related to decrease in student achievement by 12.42%, (b= -1.242, p-value=001, a=0.05) and by 8.93%, (b= - 0.893, p-value= 0.048, a=0.05) respectively. Implications of the findings are discussed with regard to achievement. From finding of the study, teacher’s awareness of the explanation of students to the success and failure of their achievement has got pedagogical implications.