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

บทคัดย่อ

The present study investigates the factors that influence higher O-NET scores of Grade 9 secondary students in Mahasarakham, Thailand, and provides guidelines for good practice, which will hopefully support Grade 9 and 12 students to successfully cope with the O-NET tests and increase their awareness and scores and together with teachers to raise the practical preparation of the O-NET tests in facilitating the students. 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 to probe into the students’ opinions on the strategies used by the school, the English teachers, and themselves to prepare for the test. The results indicated that the involved strategies, i.e., school, teacher, and student strategies, positively promoted the increase of the O-NET results. 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 reached high average percentages of student agreement (i.e., compensation strategies (86.45%), social strategies (80.68%), and memory strategies (60.05%). Based        on these findings, the guidelines for good practice and the implications for language learning and strategies were proposed and positively supported students to cope with the O-NET tests and increase their scores.