Personal factors that affect foreign language academic performance in university students
Abstract
Academic achievement has been studied for many years in both private and public educational institutions and in local, state, nationwide and international settings. Determining which factors foster academic achievement could enhance learning. There are several studies regarding how personal factors influence learning. Nevertheless, few studies deal with personal factors and academic achievement in foreign language learning. This study aimed to determine whether a personal factor such as age, genre or self-direction fosters language learning academic performance in first year college students. The research used a cuantitative, transversal, descriptive and correlational design. 39 students of a public university in northern Mexico City participated in the study. Most of the participants were young women (66.7% aged 24.3 on average). Self-directed profile was measured with the Profile Inquiry Self-direction Questionnaire. This tool consists of 50 five-point-Likert-scale items and its Cronbach’s alpha equals 0.90. Statistical analysis showed that despite an overall adequate self-direction profile of the sample and the better grades of male students who in turn were older than their female counterparts, language learning academic performance and personal factors, age (rs= .101, p < .540 N=39); genre (r=-.387, p < .015 N=39) and self-direction profile (rs=-.0540, p < .7440 N=39), had no correlation.
Downloads
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
In order to promote the development and dissemination of research in education in Latin America, the Ibero-American Journal for Educational Research and Development (RIDE) adhered to the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which is why it is identified as a Open access publication. This means that any user can read the complete text of the articles, print them, download them, copy them, link them, distribute them and use the contents for other purposes. Creative Cummons licenses allow users to specify the rights to use an open access journal available on the Internet in such a way that users know the rules of publication. Authors who publish in this journal accept the following conditions: Authors they keep the author's rights and give the magazine the right of the first publication, with the work registered with the attribution license of Creative Commons, which allows third parties to use the published material whenever they mention the authorship of the work and the first publication in this The authors can make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (eg, include it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as long as they clearly indicate that The work was published for the first time in this magazine. Authors are allowed and recommended to publish their work. low on the Internet (for example on institutional or personal pages) before and during the review and publication process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and to a greater and faster dissemination of the published work
