EXAMINING SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' SOCIAL GOAL ORIENTATION AND SELF-REGULATED LEARNING STRATEGY AS PREDICTORS OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN ANAMBRA STATE, NIGERIA.

Students’ social goal orientation and self-regulated learning strategies are strong adaptive learning behaviors that facilitate positive learning outcomes. This study aimed to explore students’ social goal orientation and self-regulated learning strategy as predictors of academic achievement   in Anambra State, Nigeria. Four research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a predictive correlational approach to answer the research questions. The population of the study comprised 21204 SS II patients from which a sample of 750 was drawn. A multistage procedure was used to select the sample. Two standardized research instruments, Goal Orientation and Learning Strategies Survey (GOALS-S) and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), as well as scores from students’ promotional examinations were used for data collection. Cronbach’s alpha was used to determine the reliability of the items in the instruments. A reliability index of 0.79 for social affiliation, 0.70 for concern, 0.81 for social responsibility, and 0.71 for social status, 0.62for social approval, 0.64 for monitoring, 0.73 for planning, and 0.68 for self-regulating activities, Standard multiple regression was used to analyze the collected data. Research question 1 was answered using multiple regression. Research question 2 was answered using unstandardized β. Research question 3 was answered using adjusted R2. Research question 4 was answered using standardized β. The null hypothesis 1 was tested using the F-test for the regression model. The null hypothesis 2 was tested using the t-test for adjusted R2. The null hypothesis 3 was tested using the t-test for β at .05 level of significance.  The findings showed that the contribution of social goal orientation and self-regulated learning strategy scores in predicting academic achievement in English scores is statistically significant. Findings also revealed that social affiliation, social concern, social responsibility, social status, planning, monitoring, and regulating activity do not significantly predict academic achievement scores in English because their p-values are greater than .05, whereas social approval significantly predicts academic achievement scores in English. Finally, it was recommended that constant examination of the relationship between social goal orientation and self-regulated learning strategy should be a continuous academic exercise by the researchers since the variables have relatively and jointly predicted students’ academic achievement.