Abstract:
The study investigated family factors as correlates of interest and academic achievement of senior secondary school students in English language in South-East Nigeria. The need for the study arose because of the fluctuations in public senior secondary school students’ achievement in English language in external examinations in the area. Twelve research questions and twelve null hypotheses guided the study. Correlational survey research design was used in the study. The population of the study comprised of 30, 820 male and female SS2 students, in which 385 were drawn using multistage sampling technique. Family Factors Inventory (FFI), English Language Interest Inventory (ELII) and English Language Achievement Test (ELAT) were designed by the researcher and used for data collection. These instruments were validated by five experts. Two in Sociology of Education, one from Language Education and another two from Measurement and Evaluation; all from University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The instruments (FFI and ELII) yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.88 and 0.72 respectively using Cronbach Alpha co-efficient, whereas, Kudar – Richardson (K-R20) formula was used for ELAT and gave reliability co-efficient of 0.76. The data were analyzed using Pearson (r) and Spearman (rho) correlation coefficient for the research questions, while, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to test the 12 null hypotheses at 0.0 5 level of significance. The study found among other thing that parental style of upbringing has moderate but negative relationship on students’ interest, parental style of upbringing revealed high and positive relationship on students’ academic achievement, parental standard of living showed positive but low relationship on students’ interest, while their academic achievement indicated a positive and high relationship with parental standard of living. Furthermore, family type, parents educational status, parents occupation, and family size have high and positive, high but negative, low and positive, low and negative relationships respectively with interest and academic achievement of students’ in English language in the area. The findings were discussed exhaustively and conclusion made. Based on the findings, recommendations and suggestion for further studies were also made.
