Students’ Perceptions on Preparation Strategies Used by Stakeholders: A Case of English O-NET Achievement

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the factors which influence higher O-NET scores of Grade 9 students in Mahasarakham, and provide guidelines for good practice, which hopefully, will support Grade 9 students to successfully cope with the O-NET tests and increase their scores. The participants were 214 Grade 10 students from a school in Mahasarakham province with the highest O-NET results in the past three years. Data were collected using a close and open-ended questionnaire in order to probe into the students’ opinions on the strategies used by the school, the English teachers, and themselves to prepare for the test. Descriptive statistics using percentages was primarily used to analyze the data. With regards to the school strategies, most of the participants agreed that the three common strategies the school employed in preparing them for the English O-NET were: offering the O-NET bank resources in the library (80.84%), conducting tutorials (75.70%), and providing extra exercise resources in the library (75.70%). The results also showed that English teachers at the school used various strategies, such as, teaching relevant lesson contents (79.44%), teaching vocabulary items, and language structures (78.50%); and using extra exercises and training strategies in the classroom (70.10 %) in preparing them for the exam, and for which they found useful. For student strategies, the findings showed that there were only three strategies that attatined high average percentages of student agreement (i.e., compensation strategies (86.45%), social strategies (80.68%), and memory strategy (60.05%)). Based on these findings, the guidelines for good practice were proposed, and the implications in terms of language learning and strategies were discussed.

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