A Comparative Study on English Language Achievement of Female Students Between Only-Girl School and Mixed-Sex School in EFL Classroom

This study’s main goal was to compare the English language achievement of female students in an all-girl school and a mixed-sex school within the Ethiopian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context. The findings, motivated in part by the observation that female students tend to have higher levels of "language-related anxiety," which affect their performance in the environment surrounding them at school. The research involved 92 grade 9 female students from both Pharo (Homosha) Boarding School, an all-girl school, and Bambassi Secondary School, mixed sex school. The study was conducted using a causal-comparative design. Semi-structured interviews were added to the data obtained by analyzing documents from students' English achievement records during their second semester. The Mann-Whitney U test was employed to measure differences in achievement across the two groups. The mixed-sex school students had a slightly higher average grade in English achievement than those from the only-girl school, but the difference was not statistically significant (p =.068) according to the result. Even though school type has some influence on English achievement, the findings also indicate that other factors such as teaching style and school resources are equally important, as psychological factors like speaking anxiety can also have an impact.