The Effects of Learning Attributes on Students’ Writing Performance

This research investigates how three students’ learning attributes—attitudes, behavior, and English proficiency background contribute to the students’ writing performance. Statistical methods explored three primary areas: (1) the influence of students’ attitudes towards the students’ choice of teaching methods and learning behavior, (2) the benefits of consultations in enhancing students’ writing performance, and (3) the impact of the three factors—English proficiency background, online learning duration, and numbers of consultation—on students’ writing performance. The study involved 29 first-year undergraduate engineering students. The results showed that the students with positive attitude towards English learning exhibited higher satisfactions and engagement, regardless of whether they followed a teacher-directed or self-directed method. This positive attitude had a substantial positive correlation with the satisfactions of both self-directed (r = 0.637) and teacher-directed (r = 0.447) methods. Additionally, the satisfactions of the self-directed method significantly correlated with the satisfactions of the teacher-directed method (r = 0.707) and with learning behavior through the teacher-directed method (r = 0.581). With notable differences in pre-test and post-test scores, the consultations were pivotal in enhancing writing performance of the students who participated in the optional extra-session (t = 8.846) when comparing to those who did not (t = 5.138). The data analysis using techniques namely Feature Importance and Univariate Selection indicated that online learning duration (the time spent on the teaching materials) had the most significant impact on the students’ writing performance.