ISSN : 1985-5826 AJTLHE Vol. 5, No.2, July 2013, 34-49 FACTORS INFLUENCING COLLEGE STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN CAMBODIA: A CASE STUDY Heng Kreng Hiroshima University, Japan Abstract The purpose of this study is to address achievement gaps among Cambodian students attending an English higher education institution in Cambodia by exploring factors that contribute to their academic achievement. Using a hierarchical multiple regression on second-year students (N=215) and teachers (N=23), this study examined the relative influence of student engagement behaviors, students’ background characteristics, and teacher quality on students’ academic achievement. Both general and interaction effects by students’ geographical origins were examined. The results suggested a variety of factors that positively predicted student achievement: the importance of students investing more efforts in homework or given tasks and whole-class participation, students’ pre-college academic experience, teachers’ teaching experience and course workload and difficulty. Interaction effect existed between students’ pre-college academic experience and geographical origins. With these findings, some important implications for closing student achievement gaps are discussed. Keyword: academic achievement; Cambodia; college students; interaction effects INTRODUCTION The last decade can be characterized as a period of dramatic growth of English language learning at a collegiate level in Cambodia. With English being considered a lingua franca (Clayton, 2002) and vitally linked to long-term academic, economic and occupational necessity, both regionally and internationally, the demand for English education has quickly expanded into university education. In recent years, enrollment in English language program amounts to a comparatively sizeable share of total student enrollment at Cambodian universities (Chet, 2006; The Department of Cambodian Higher Education, 2009). English enrollment is projected to grow given the country’s economic growth and plans to improve international relations and regional integration (e.g., ASEAN 2015) (ASEAN Secretariat, 2009). While there has been a lot of attention on the increasing availability of English programs in colleges, there have been fewer discussions on the quality of student learning. Some actions at the institutional and individual levels have been undertaken in response to public demands, but most of these efforts fail to adequately address student learning quality. For instance, the Accreditation Committee of Cambodia was established to assure education quality, yet it evaluates programs mostly by institutional characteristics and management characteristics (Chet, 2006). Previous studies of English language education have centered on the development of English language teaching policies/status (Appleby, Copley, Sithirajvongsa, & Pennycook, 2002; Clayton, 2002; Clayton, 2008; Moore & Bounchan, 2010; Neau, 2003) or learning and teaching strategies (Keuk, 2008, 2009; Keuk & Tith,