The relationship between English language proficiency and academic performance of university students – should academic institutions really be concerned?

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate if there is a relationship between English language proficiency and the overall academic performance of Preparatory Year students in three faculties: Engineering, Business (including Business Administration, Economics and Political Science) and Informatics and Computer Science. Data was obtained from the Student Record System of 566 students and three sets of statistical analysis were performed. The results indicated that there is a significant but moderate positive relation between the students’ proficiency in English and their overall academic success. Specifically, the higher the English proficiency of students on entry to the university, the better they performed in their degree area courses as well as in their English levels.