ACHIEVEMENT IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE COURSES AND STUDENTS’ EXPOSURE TO THE LANGUAGE OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM

Abstract

Students’ achievements in English language have often been emphasized in mass media and academic literature. Language learning is a conscious process and the product of either formal or informal learning situation by having the exposure of the language itself. When social interaction using a target language among students was low, it resulted in poor performance and low language competency.  Thus, this research was carried out to study whether the exposure to the language from mass media and social interaction differed based on their achievement in English language courses. 369 students from various programmes that had taken English courses in a private college in Melaka were identified as the samples of the study. Adapted version of the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ) was utilized to determine how frequent the samples were exposed to both English in their social circle and through mass media. The samples were divided into different groups of poor, average, and high achievers according to their most recent grades in the respective language courses. ANOVA tests were conducted between the variables and the P value was set at .05. The findings indicated that exposure to mass media in the English language significantly differed based on achievement in English language courses. Specifically, the significant difference was recorded between the excellent achievers and the poor achievers.