Junior high school students’ perception of classroom environment and their English achievement

Abstract

Classroom environment is different from one school to another. This may lead to students’ achievement. This study was aimed at finding out whether the two variables were correlated positively by involving 378 students selected randomly from 55 schools in different sub-districts. The ‘What Is Happening In this Class (WIHIC) questionnaire’ and an English test were used to collect the data. The findings showed that: (1) there was a positive correlation between classroom environment and students’ English achievement; (2) although there was very small contribution of classroom environment (total) to students’ English achievement, yet when stepwise method was applied, ‘equity’ aspect shared the highest contribution to students’ achievement, and (3) interestingly, based on gender, there was a significant difference in students’ perception of classroom environment but not in their English achievement.