Factors Influencing Academic Performance of Undergraduates Majoring in English Language at the Department of English (DoE) IFL, RUPP

Abstract

The present study aims to examine the levels of achievement motivation and goal-setting skills among third-year students majoring in English at a leading foreign language institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. A secondary objective is to develop a predictive model for students’ academic performance, measured by their second-semester results. To achieve these objectives, the study employed a quantitative approach, specifically a survey design with multiple regression analyses. A total of 172 third-year students participated by completing a questionnaire adapted from Muthee and Thomas (2009), which contains 32 items measuring achievement motivation, and Sherer et al. (1982), which includes 23 items assessing goal-setting skills. The Cronbach’s alpha values were .68 for achievement motivation and .83 for goal-setting skills, indicating acceptable to good reliability.

The findings reveal that students’ levels of achievement motivation and goal-setting skills were within the neutral range, with mean scores of 3.09 and 3.27, respectively. Furthermore, a significant negative relationship was found between academic performance and goal-setting skills, while a positive correlation was observed between goal-setting and achievement motivation. However, the combined predictive model using achievement motivation, goal-setting skills, and family income did not significantly predict academic performance, F(3, 88) = 1.15, p = .33. This indicates that the model is not statistically significant and suggests that other variables may influence academic performance beyond those included in this study.