The Relationship between Fist Year English Major Students’ Preparatory School Performance, College Entrance Exam Scores, and their Gender and Communicative English Performance: Bahir Dar University in Focus

Abstract

The study examines the relationship between students’ preparatory school performances, entrance exam scores and gender and communicative English performance. It also explores gender differences in the variables treated. The subjects of the study were 162 students. The students were selected using systematic random and purposive sampling techniques. To gather data, document analysis and tests were used. Inferential statistics such as t-test, Pearson product moment correlation coefficient and multiple regressions were the major statistical techniques applied to analyze the data. The results reveal that male students surpass female students in all the variables treated. It is also found that all the variables are interrelated positively. Moreover, the output of the multiple regressions shows that 41% of the variance in communicative English performance is accounted for by the group contribution of the predictors. Among these, gender and college entrance English exam scores were found to be the best predictors. The findings seem to suggest the need to pay attention to the correlates of students' verbal skills and/or design possible strategies that would enhance students' communicative English performances.