Individual factors and academic success in an efl classroom: a case study of a group of 2nd of eso learners from a state public highschool in a valencian middlesize city

Abstract

This Master’s dissertation belongs to Modalitat 2: Educational Research. We have examined the influence of individual factors in the learning of English as a foreign language depending on the marks students obtained in the English subject final term exams. The sample studied is formed by forty-one students in the second year of ESO, with ages between 12 and 15, from a state high-school in a medium-sized city in the north of the Valencian Country (IES Jaume I of Borriana). We have measured the influence in their academic success of a total amount of seventeen individual variables, divided into two main groups: on the one side, learners’ internal characteristics, also classified according to cognitive ones and affective ones and, on the other side, external influences on learners. The results of the statistical analyses suggest that the most influential individual variables are related to cognition and to external learning conditions.