Time Management Skills of Summer Students: the Case of EFL Learners at AAU

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to examine the time management skills of summer students in the English Department of Addis Ababa University. It targeted examining the effectiveness of the time management skills of the students focusing on their goal setting, prioritizing, managing interruption, beating procrastination and scheduling. To this end, the researcher took 80 2 nd year students from the Department of English who took the course Academic Writing Skills (EnLa 303) with him in the 2009/10 academic year. The researcher adopted the questionnaire developed by Mind Tools Ltd. (1995) to measure the effectiveness of the time management skills of individuals. It had 15 items that focused on goal setting, prioritization, managing interruptions, beating procrastination, and scheduling activities. The subjects were asked to respond on a five point scale. Then, each student’s score in these main areas was calculated using the Mind Tools Ltd soft program. However,their responses were categorized and aggregate responses were used for analysis. The findings showed that only slightly more than half of the students (53.75%) had effective
time management practices, which actually did not indicate whether all these students were ‘good’ in all aspects of the time management skills, or not. The results of the study, for example, showed that only (6.25%) of the target students were ‘good’ at setting goals. The study revealed that there were also quite a number of students who did not set goals for their studies, nor scheduled, nor prioritized their daily academic and other social activities, and thus they often faced unexpected interruptions and procrastinations.