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The Relationship Between Students’ English Achievement and Student

Characteristics

Conference Paper · August 2016

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Ergün Cihat Corbaci Vildan Bağcı

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 and Student Characteristics

*Institute of Educational Sciences, Gazi University

e.cihat.corbaci@gmail.com, vildanbagci@gmail.com, cavdarderya@yandex.com,

erdemiraysenur@gmail.com
Abstract

achievement and student variables. The study group of the research is eighth grade students
in public schools in Turkey. The sample of this research consists of 855 students. Path
analysis was used to test the model regarding the contributions of independent variables

determine the relationships between the independent variables. The LISREL 8.80 software
has been used for model test. The findings of the research -
which has direct unmediated effect on the students' English achievement had the strongest
effect on the outcome variable. There is a positive significant relationship between self-
confidence in English learning and liking for English. There is also a positive significant
relationship between number of English books, taking private lessons, getting help for
English and time spent on English learning. However, home facilities had a negative
significant relationship with time spent on English. In addition, being bilingual was
negatively correlated with the outcome variable.
Keywords: English language, English achievement, path analysis, self-confidence,
Main Conference Topic: Language Education

Introduction
Human being has always needed to communicate and language is the most important
tool used for this communication. Up to now, a lot of languages have been spoken by
different nations and even today more than one thousand languages exist worldwide
(Katzner, 2002).
Considering the last three decades, English language has come into prominence and it
has become the language preferred by millions when lingua franca is needed. Because of the
fact that English language has been spoken by many countries and it has been accepted as an
international communication language, various institutions were established and tests were
developed to measure and improve English language skills. Test of English as a Foreign
Language (TOEFL) is one of these tests. According to the results of this test, countries
participated in this test have a different level of English language skills (TOEFL,
2009;2010;2013) Turkey is one these countries participated in this test. Considering the
results of this test, among 44 countries, Turkey is one of the countries that have the worst
results in terms of English language level. Besides, when national exams in Turkey were
scrutinized, English levels of the students were found insufficient.
As English has an essential part in communication worldwide, its improvement has to
be taken into consideration. Therefore, determining student variables that affect their English
achievement and scrutinizing the relationship between these variables are important in terms
of understanding English language achievement. The purpose of this research is to investigate
student variables affecting English language achievement.
Related works
There are various studies performed to investigate English achievement. Chou (2007)
investigated the perspectives of English language learners (ELLs) about the importance of the
five factors, learning environment, learning strategies, motivation, beliefs, and linguistic
distance related to learning English and to determine the relationship between these factors
with ELLs' language learning and their language proficiency. Abdallah and Ahmed (2015)
investigated the impact of self-confidence on EFL Sudanese tertiary level students. Farooq,
Chaudhry, Shafiq and Berhanu (2011) examined different factors influencing the academic
performance of secondary school students on English and mathematics. Kim (2005)
investigated the effects of a constructivist approach on academic achievement, self-concept
and learning strategies, and student preference. Bilsay (2012) investigated the factors that
affect the success of foreign language English grades of seventh grade students. The factors
in this study are family property (education level of parents and their English knowledge and
, existence of computer
at home, computer software supporting English learning, English dictionary, and English

bles are birth places of student and

birth places of parents of the student, educational levels of parents, professions of parents,
monthly income level of the family, total number of persons in the family, the number of
siblings studying, having a study
foreign language websites on Internet, listening to foreign music, reading foreign books,
watching foreign movies, watching the foreign channels, parents speaking foreign languages
and the language they speak, helpful books-materials available at home for language
education, the frequency of meeting of parents with English teachers, the frequency of family

institutions or not and take private classes or not, daily work capacity for English lesson and
whether they want to work in any area of foreign language in the future or not, effect the
academic successes of the students at English class. Considering the previous studies, only
student variables were taken into consideration for the study.

Model
The model is shown in Figure 1.

Figure1. Theoretical model for the relationships between English achievement and students'
characteristics.
Fig. 1 demonstrates causality model for English achievement using research variables. In this
number of books, taking
private English lessons, getting help for English lesson, being bilingual, taking private

English, self-confidence in English and time spent on English learning are endogenous
variables in this model.

Implementation
This study was performed to investigate the relationship between student variables and
their English achievement. The sample of this research consists of 855 (461 female and 394
male) students at 8th grade in seven different cities of Turkey. The data obtained at the end of
the application were analyzed using SPSS 21.0, R Studio and LISREL 8.80.
Path-analysis was used to (a) test the model regarding the contributions of independent

achievement, (b) determine the relationships between the independent variables which were
defined before and (c) assess the most impact of independent variables on
achievement which is outcome variable.

English language levels. English achievement test consists of 26 multiple-choice item. While
achievement test was being developed, pilot study was conducted with 198 students. After
pilot study, item analyses were done and investigated. The values of the item discrimination
and item difficulty for pilot study ranges from 0,38 to 0,62 and 0,29 to 0,60 respectively. The
data obtained from pilot study were investigated for unidimensionality. It was concluded that
the test was unidimensional. The same procedure was applied for the final study that was
performed with 863 students. The item discrimination and item difficulty values for the final
study range from 0,30 to 0,57 and 0,26 to 0,54 respectively. It was also investigated for
unidimensionality and it was found unidimensional.
-confidence in
English Learning scale. The first scale consists of five items and the second scale consists of
nine items. These scales were investigated by exploratory factor analysis and they were found
unidimensional. The eigenvalue of Liking for English is 2,94 and explained variance rate is
58,96% and the eigenvalue of self-confidence in English Learning scale is 5,43 and explained
variance rate is 50,35%. The factor loadings of Liking for English and Self-confidence in
English learning range from 0,62 to 0,86 and 0,62

answers (Yes/no) were transformed into factor scores and included in the analysis.
Both categorical and continuous variables were used in the analysis. To measure
achievement in English, English achievement test was used and the data obtained from this

continuous variable (0-100). Also liking for English, self-confidence in English learning and
ntinuous variables, too. Taking private English lesson, being
bilingual, watching English movies, number of English books, getting help for English lesson

English are the ordinal variables.

Maximum likelihood method for testing parameter estimatation, R2s of endogenous
variables, and chi-squares were obtained using LISREL. Also correlation matrices were used
as input in testing the model.
 Model testing was conducted using Root Mean Square Error of Approximation
(RMSEA), Normed Fit Index (NFI), Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI), Comparative Fit Index
(CFI), Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) and Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI).

Results
Table 1 shows fitting indicators of the structure model for Fig. 2. Null hypothesis indicates
that the model is available in the population.

114,0
4
26 df
4,49 /df
0,97 CFI
0,98 GFI
0,96 NFI
0,92 NNFI
0,93 AGFI
0,06 RMS
EA

Table1. Fitting indexes for the theoretical model of educational achievement.

When we looked Table 1 for the null hypothesis, chi-squared value in 5% error level is
significant. Because in studies where sample size is large this value tends to be significant,
other indexes are taken into consideration for the model fit. According to the Table 1, the
lower bound of the confidence interval 90% for RMSEA is less than 0,08. CFI and NNFI
indexes are more than 0,90. Goodness of fit index of GFI, NFI and AGFI are also more than
0,90. Therefore, the proposed model has a perfect fit in the target population.
 Figure2. Path plot of the theoretical model for relationships between English achievement
and students' characteristics.
In Figure 2, medulvl, fedulvl, gethelp, biling, watchm, nbooks, prvles, timeeng, likeng, selfef

for English, being bilingual, watching English movies, number of English books, taking
private English lessons, time spent on English, liking for English, self-confidence in English,
home facilities respectively.
-0,08
to 0,69. Despite the fact that some of the coefficients had low values, all of them were
significant at the 95% confidence interval (p<0,01).
When the path modeling in Figure 1 was examined, it can be said that being bilingual, the
time spent on English, self-confiden
direct unmediated effect on the students' English achievement. All these unmediated variables
explained about 20% of the English achievement ( =0,20). In addition, the regression
coefficients indic -

achievement.
We also extended our analysis by examining the indirect effects from the latent constructs.
-

had the most strongly effect on explaining the variance of time spent on English learning.

negatively correlated with English achievement.

Conclusion

achievement using path analysis. For this purpose, following substances were completed: (a)
testing the model regarding the contributions of independent variables which are related to

relationships between the independent variables which were defined before and (c) assessing
the most impact of independent variables
variable.
-confidence in

direct unmediated effect on the students' English achievement had the strongest effect on the
outcome variable. According to this finding, when self-confidence in English learning,

achievement increases. However, state of being bilingual a negative was negatively

correlated with the outcome variable so it had negative path coefficients in the proposed
model. The reason for this negative correlation is that the sample of this research consisted of
bilingual students whose native languages were Arabic and Kurdish. They mostly learn
Turkish at primary school and then they learn English as a foreign language.
The results show that there is a positive significant relationship between self-confidence in
English learning and liking for English. Therefore, one can say that the more students like
English learning the more self-confidence they have. In contrast, low liking for English has
negative impact on self-confidence in English learning. There is likewise a positive
significant relationship between liking for English and the time spent on English. So, the
more student like English the more they spend time on English.
activities which
can develop to self-confidence on English. Also, when these activities increase, it will
increase the time spent on English.

References
[1] Abdallah, S. A. A., & Ahmed, A. G. A. (2015). The impact of self-confidence on efl
Sudanese tertiary level students. International Journal of Information Research and
Review, 2(9), 1093-110
[2] Bilsay, G. Ö. (2012). The factors affecting the success of foreign language English in
accordance with the results of the national level determination exam. Master Thesis.
Hacettepe University, Social Sciences Institution, Ankara.
[3] Chou, C. T. E. (2007). Factors affecting language proficiency of english language

University, TexasBackus, J., Lakshminarasimhan, Y. O., & Estrin, D. (2002). Dirl:

Improvement of the memory bus. In Proceedings of the Conference on Random,
"Fuzzy" Modalities, pp. 301-311.
[4] Socio-cultural factors effecting academic successes of 8th
grade students of primary education at English class
Education Sciences Institute. Malatya.
[5] Farooq, M. S., Chaudhry, A. H., Shafiq, M. & Berhanu, G. (2011). Factors affecting
Journal of
Quality and Technology Management. 7(2), 01-14.
[6] Katzner, K. (2002). The languages of the world (3rd Edition). ABD: Routlegde.
[7] Kim, J. S. (2005). The effects of constructivist teaching approach on student academic
achievement, self-concept, and learning strategies. Asia Pacific Education Review, 6(1),
7-19.
[8] TOEFL (2009). Test and score data summary for TOEFL internet-based and paper-based
tests. Downloaded from
https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/test_score_data_summary_2009.pdf.
[9] TOEFL (2010). Test and score data summary for TOEFL internet-based and paper-based
tests. Downloaded from https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/TOEFL-SUM-
2010.pdf.
[10] TOEFL (2013). Test and score data summary for TOEFL iBT tests. Downloaded from
https://www.ets.org/s/toefl/pdf/94227_unlweb.pdf.
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Brief biographies of the authors

and
Evaluation in Education, Gazi University. He has graduated from Gazi University with a
degree of B.Sc. in Foreign Language Education and with M.Sc. in Measurement and
Evaluation in Education. As an English teacher, she was employed for a public school in

Institute of Educational Sciences, Department of Measurement and Evaluation in Education,

Gazi University, since 2013.

Evaluation in Education, Gazi University. She has graduated from Gazi University with a
degree of B.Sc. in Elementary Mathematics Education and from Gazi University with M.Sc.
in Measurement and Evaluation in Education. She has been working as a research assistant at
the Institute of Educational Sciences, Department of Measurement and Evaluation in
Education, Gazi University, since 2013.
Derya Çavdar
Derya Çavdar is currently pursuing PhD at the Department of Measurement and
Evaluation in Education, Gazi University. She has graduated from Middle East Technical
University with a degree of B.Sc. in the Department of Elementary Mathematics Education
and from Gazi University with M.Sc. in Measurement and Evaluation in Education. As a
math teacher, she was employed for a public school in Turkey in between 2012 and 2013 and
then she was accepted as a Comenius assistant in Italy for one semester. She has been
working as a research assistant at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Department of
Measurement and Evaluation in Education, Gazi University, since 2013.

at the Department of Measurement and

Evaluation in Education, Gazi University. She has graduated from Middle East Technical
University with a degree of B.Sc. in Foreign Language Education and from Gazi University
with M.Sc. in Measurement and Evaluation in Education. As an English teacher, she was

working as a research assistant at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Department of

Measurement and Evaluation in Education, Gazi University, since 2013.