A practical academic reading and vocabulary screening test as a predictor of achievement in first-year university students: implications for test purpose and use

ABSTRACT

Language proficiency is assumed to play a role in achievement in tertiary education. When requirements for university entrance are low or demographic changes in the population take place, universities often employ post-admission language assessments to screen all incoming students. In this study, we will look at the predictive validity of a practical, low-stakes, web-based academic reading and vocabulary screening test. Additionally, we will investigate the predictive value of the screening test when other known predictors are controlled for. Our results confirm prior research that academic language proficiency is a small but meaningful predictor of achievement in that it can detect the students that are at-risk because of lower language proficiency. The result correlates modestly with our measure of achievement, credit completion rate, with a correlation coefficient of around .30. When other predictors are controlled for in a multiple regression analysis, demographic background variables do not seem to have a large impact on the predictive value of the language screening test. In our sample of mostly native speaking monolingual students, the academic language proficiency measure does appear to reflect students’ educational background variables. As a low-stakes instrument, it is useful as an early-alert signal, prompting further diagnosis or remedial activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Predictive validity
• academic reading
• vocabulary knowledge
• academic achievement
• first year students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jordi Heeren

Jordi Heeren is a lecturer at the Leuven Language Institute (KU Leuven) and is also a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven. He teaches academic writing and speaking skills at the Faculty of Social Sciences. His PhD research focuses on the validity of a post-entry academic reading and vocabulary screening test for first-year university students.

Dirk Speelman

Dirk Speelman is Professor at the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven. He teaches courses on information science, statistics for the humanities, linguistic methodology (corpus linguistics) and usage-based models of language. He is head of the research group Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics and is chair of the Leuven Statistics Research Centre.

Lieve De Wachter

Lieve De Wachter is Professor at the Leuven Language Institute (KU Leuven). She teaches academic writing and speaking skills at the Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences and is head of the KU Leuven Writing Centre.