Abstract
It has been widely researched that students’ academic English levels are critical to impact students’ academic performance in the English-medium universities, both among international students and domestic students (Bo et al., 2022; Lim & Bo, 2021). This has been driving the increasing provisions of academic English to university students at the institutional level to facilitate students’ academic studies in the degree programmes. However, there is little research about how the disciplinary instructors perceive the efficacy of the academic English provisions or the academic English skills of their students to meet the expectations across subjects. The study aims to explore disciplinary instructors’ perceptions about their students’ academic English and its impacts on their academic performance in the degree programmes. The mixed methods design was adopted, with the faculty survey among more than 400 disciplinary instructors (followed by a validation against factor analytic models) and the semi-structured interviews with 10 participants for the in-depth understanding. The 42-item questionnaire developed by Rosenfeld, Leung, and Oltman (2001) to understand the importance of English competency in reading, writing, listening, and speaking for academic success of university learning was adapted, and the Rasch analyses confirmed the four factors perceived by disciplinary instructors as critical for students’ academic studies in the degree programmes. The findings could directly help to shape the development of academic English support in the English-medium universities to better help students with their academic success across different disciplines.
Author Information
Wenjin Vikki Bo, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore
Lyndon Lim, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore
Trinh Luu, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore
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