How much do language and literacy skills of international students differ from those of home students, to what extent does this affect academic achievement, and when does language proficiency stop being a barrier for learning? The talk explores these issues and implications for university policies and support for international students.
An increasing number of university students pursue education in English as a foreign language. An implicit assumption is that their English is good enough, or would improve sufficiently over the course of their studies, to allow them to fulfil their academic potential. Yet, research conducted in the UK suggests that international students perform notably less well on average than home students (Morrison et al, 2005), with Chinese students being particularly vulnerable (Iannelli & Huang, 2014). Here I discuss my recent research with British and Chinese students in the UK. In Study 1, 65 Chinese and 64 British students, matched on non-verbal IQ, were tested on a range of English language and literacy measures at the beginning and at the end of the academic year. We also collected their end-of-year academic marks. In Study 2, 153 Chinese students in the UK, some of whom met the language entry-requirements through attending relevant language test-preparation programmes and some who did so without availing themselves of such help, were tested on arrival on two independent measures of English proficiency and their end-of-year academic marks were collected. The design of these two studies allowed us to address the following questions: How much do the language and literacy skills of international students differ from those of homes students? How much do language and literacy skills affect academic success at university? Where is the threshold after which language stops being a barrier to academic performance? What effect does the intensive language test-preparation industry have on the extrapolation and predictive validity of language qualifications with which international students arrive? I consider challenges of pursuing an academic degree in a foreign language, and how psycholinguistic research can inform university policies and strategies to ensure that educational experience and outcomes of international students are not compromised.
