The current study in investigates t

The current study in investigates the relationship between several indicators of English proficiency (i.e., overall English GPA, students’ English language skill, and institutional-based ELP test score) and students’ academic performance, as measured by overall measure by overall college GPA, subject areas GPA, and course level GPA. Overall, after controlling for differences in students’ majors, cohorts, gender, age, we found a strong relationship between the students’ level of English proficiency and their academic performance across subject areas and course levels. There are, however, several important finding in the current study that deserve future discussion.
First of all, we found that while the overall English GPA in the first year explained a huge amount of variance (42%) in the students’ overall college GPA, institutional-based ELP test score explained a very small percentage of the variance (2%) in the dependent variable.
Second, we found that language competencies related to knowledge acquisition such as reading and listening comprehension were more important for students’ academic success than language competencies related to information transfer such as written and oral expression. It is obvious that students will need to understand the course materials through, for example, reading a text or listening to a lecture first, before they can perform academically though written assignment or a presentation.
Third, the current study also suggested that English proficiency are equally important across the years in college. More specifically, we found that the overall English GPA explained roughly the same percentage of variance (i.e., 12-14%) in the GPAs for 200 level, 300 level, and 400 level courses. This finding indicated that the level of students’ English competency in more or less stable throughout the program.