Variables that predict high school students' performance regarding english course: a longitudinal analysis

The aim of this study was to examine the possible effects of high school students' self-efficacy beliefs, perceived instrumentality, metacognitive learning strategies, epistemic curiosity, achievement goals, and their attitudes towards English lessons on their English course achievement over the course of one academic year. Longitudinal survey method with panel design was used in the current study. The data were collected at four separate time periods (i.e., beginning of the fall semester, end of the fall semester, beginning of the spring semester, and end of the spring semester) over the course of one academic year and based on the same students. The sample consisted of 1357 students who enrolled in five separate Anatolian High Schools, located in four separate counties of Zonguldak city in 2015-2016 academic year. Students' attitudes, self-efficacy beliefs, perceived instrumentality, achievement goals, metacognitive learning strategies, and epistemic curiosity regarding English lessons were assessed through "Attitudes towards English Scale", "Foreign Language Self-Efficacy Scale", "Perceived Instrumentality Scale", "2x2 Achievement Goals Scale", "Metacognitive Learning Strategies Scale", and "Epistemic Curiosity Scale" respectively. Students' English course achievement was described based on their average grades that were obtained at the end of the autumn semester and spring semester of the 2015-2016 academic year. Data analyses were conducted using the SPSS 21 and AMOS 21 statistical software programs. The findings revealed that attitudes towards English lessons predicted course achievement, and this, in turn, predicted attitudes towards English lessons, which indicated a causal relationship between attitudes towards English and course achievement. In addition, the results also showed that, when compared to the effects of other variables, attitudes towards English lessons had strong effects on course achievement that also suppressed the effects of other variables on course achievement. Importantly, in the present study, it was also found that the direct effect of attitudes towards English lessons on course achievement at the end of the spring semester was significant and negative; whereas their indirect effect through the course achievement at the end of the autumn semester and attitudes towards English lessons at the beginning of the spring semester was significant and positive. Another important finding of the study was that having higher levels of epistemic curiosity and perceived instrumentality along with the adoption of some achievement goals (i.e., performance-approach goals) and metacognitive strategies (i.e., organizational and evaluation strategies) depended on English course achievement. The negative effect of unrealistic perceptions of students' English writing self-efficacy on course achievement was another important finding of the xvi study. Implications for English language teaching and directions for future studies were also discussed in the study.