Nowadays, poor academic performance is among the main concerns of teachers, syllabus designers, curriculum developers and the whole educational body. The issue becomes worse in non-English speaking countries where the medium of instruction at colleges/ universities is English but students are exposed to English for a limited number of hours before beginning their study at college/university. To answer the question ‘what are the causal factors that affect students’ poor performances in non-English speaking countries like Oman? 151 essays written by students at post foundation level in Salalah College of Technology were examined carefully. The factors involved in students’ low academic achievements categorized into four macro groups; student-related factors, teacher- related factors, family- related factors and some other factors such as marriage, health problem, toxic friendships and transportation problem. The findings show that while student-related factors have the highest impact on students’ performance, teacher-related factors had the lowest effect.
Keywords: Causes, Family-related factors, Poor performance, Teacher-related factors, student-related factors
