Academic Interest and Self-esteem as Correlates of Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement in English Language in Nigeria

Aims: This study examined academic interest and self-esteem as correlates of secondary school students’ academic achievement in English language in Nigeria.

Study Design: Correlational survey

Place and Duration of Study: Anambra State, Nigeria, conducted between December 2021 and March 2022.

Method: The accessible population for this study comprises 18,297 senior secondary school two SS2 students from 261 secondary schools situated in the six education zones in Anambra state, the sampling technique adopted was the proportionate stratified random sampling technique. This was use to select 2,160 SS 2 students. The instruments adopted for data collection are: students’ academic interest scale, self-esteem scale and students’ academic achievement scores in English language. Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression Analysis were statistical tools adopted for data analysis.

Results: Table 1, 2 and 3 revealed a moderate positive relationship between secondary school students’ academic interest, self-esteem jointly with their academic achievement in English language. Similarly, hypothesis in Table 4, 5 and 6 reports that at 0.05 level of significance and 2158df, the t-test statistic value 15.95 with a Pvalue of 0.00 is less than 0.05, hence the second hypotheses is rejected. This implies that the relationship existing between self-esteem and academic achievement of secondary school students in English language in Anambra State is significant. Furthermore, at 0.05 level of significance 3df numerator and 2045df denominator, the F statistics value 314.12, with Pvalue of 0.00 is less than 0.05, the third null hypothesis is rejected. This goes to show that the relationship existing among secondary school students’ academic interest and self-esteem jointly with academic achievement in English language is significant.

Conclusion: This study concludes that the joint relationship existing among academic interest, self-esteem jointly with the academic achievement of secondary school students in English language was reported to be moderate and also positive. This implies that the coefficient was close to 1.00 (perfect relationship). Justifying this, it could be likened to the fact that students only spend 45 to 90 minutes per day in school with each teacher, so it is nearly impossible for them to unconsciously transmit all of the knowledge they need to get to them within that time frame. So therefore, there is need for parents as well to fulfil their first job, which is to be a teacher to their children. In the same vein, the relationship existing among secondary school students’ academic interest and self-esteem jointly with academic achievement in English language is statistically significant.