A COMPARATIVE INVESTIGATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF CURRENT UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO GENERATION Z: RURAL VERSUS URBAN STUDENTS

Abstract

Understanding the audience is the key to successful communication. Therefore, an effective teacher has to consider manifold differences among the students in any given classroom: the characteristics of the students, the mindset of the generation, the variety of learning styles, the students’ needs and goals, and their educational background. Since Aleksandras Stulginskis University (ASU) awards the degrees in food sciences and agriculture, a sizeable part of the students come to study from rural areas. Recent educational research in the USA, UK and Lithuania have revealed a significant difference in the academic performance of the students from rural and urban areas, however, it is still an unresolved problem for the educational institutions in Lithuania. This area has an insubstantial amount of research documented. Thus, the current research aims at investigating the relationship between the location of the school, a student graduated from, and the results of the English Language Diagnostic Test as well as analysing the academic performance of the Agronomy Faculty students through the 2nd, 3rd and 4th semesters. The study focuses on our current undergraduate students - the always-connected, app-happy, smartphone-dependent, born with the Internet, technology, and social media Generation Z. The research methods involve the statistical and comparative analyses of the urban and rural student academic performance (diagnostic test results, examination grades of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th semesters) in the English language; the theoretical assumptions based on the related scientific literature and documents on educational statistics, and the investigation of motivational factors influencing the academic performance of the Generation Z students in line with the processed survey results. The research was initiated in 2015, student academic performance was monitored through the period from 2015 to 2017, and the survey was administered in 2017. The research findings indicate that students from rural schools have an inferior level of the English language compared to the students that finished schools in urban areas, whereas the examination results through the second, third and fourth semesters unveiled an unexpected tendency. Figures show that students from rural schools not only managed to catch up with their colleagues from urban schools, but also outperformed their urban-school peers by roughly increasing rates of their performance. The research evidence could aid teachers and education policy makers, providing a better understanding of Generation Z students from rural and urban areas and factors influencing students' performance.

Keywords: rural, urban, English Language Proficiency, generation Z.

Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2017.159