Do secondary school-leaving English examination results predict university students’ academic writing performance? A latent profile analysis

Abstract

Secondary school-leaving English examination results are often regarded as indicators of students’ competence to study in English-medium universities, which is usually demonstrated through source-based academic writing. In English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) contexts, many English-medium universities require local undergraduates to enrol in an academic writing course, unless they received outstanding English results in secondary school-leaving examinations. This study investigates the relationship between ESL undergraduates’ secondary school-leaving English examination results and their academic writing performance through latent profile analysis. Results show that students can be grouped into four classes of academic writing performer (AWP), namely Complex-AWP, High-AWP, Medium-AWP and Low-AWP. Surprisingly, the Complex-AWP group had the highest means in structure, argument and language, but the lowest in citation. Secondary school-leaving English examination results can generally predict students’ class membership in language, argumentation and, to some extent, structure, but not citation. An important implication is that students with high English proficiency do not necessarily do well in all aspects of academic writing. This study can inform university senior management on how to set policies about who needs an academic writing course and provide appropriate training in various aspects of academic writing for university students with diverse English proficiency.

Keywords:

• Latent profile analysis
• academic writing performance
• high-stakes testing
• English as a second language

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is funded by the Language Fund under Research and Development Projects 2015-16 of the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR), Hong Kong SAR granted to the first author (Code: EDB(LE)/P&R/EL/164/15); and The Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning given to the second author (Code: TP2018068).

Notes on contributors

Kevin Wai Ho Yung

Kevin Wai Ho YUNG is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The Education University of Hong Kong. He has published in international journals such as ELT Journal, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, System and TESOL Quarterly. His research interests include English for academic purposes, shadow education, language assessment and English learning motivation.

Yuyang Cai

Yuyang CAI is Professor, School of Languages, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics. He had a PhD in language testing and assessment. His areas of research interest extend to large-scale educational assessment, educational psychology and quantitative methods. He had rich experience developing English for Specific/Academic Purposes assessments in mainland China and Hong Kong.