Vocabulary Knowledge, Attitude and Gender as Correlates of achievement in Poetic Literature among Senior Secondary School Students in Akure, Nigeria

This study was carried out to investigate students’ vocabulary knowledge, attitude and gender as predictors of their academic achievement in poetry in Akure, Nigeria. The expost facto research design was adopted. Participants were drawn from 13 schools in intact classes were purposively selected. The three instruments used were Students’ Achievement Test in poetry (r=0.78), Vocabulary knowledge Test ((??=0.76) and Questionnaire on Students’ Attitude to poetry (r=0.73). Four research questions were answered at 0.5 level of significance. Data were analyzed using frequency counts and simple percentage. Multiple regression analysis was also used to provide answers to the research questions.Findings revealed that there was a significant relationship between students’ vocabulary knowledge and their academic achievement (r= .295, p<.05), and between students’ attitude and their academic achievement in poetry (r=.138, p<.05). There was, however, no significant relationship between gender and students’ academic achievement in poetry. There was a significant joint contributions of all the independent variables to academic achievement in poetry (F (3.390) =12.712, p<.05) accounting for 10.5% of the variance. There was a significant relative contribution of each of the variables to achievement in poetry. Based on these findings, teachers should note the variables when planning lesson and use effective strategies to improve students’ attitude.