SECONDARY ENGLISH GRADE AS A PREDICTOR OF STUDENTS’ ENTRANCE ENGLISH COMPETENCE AND PROGRAMME PLACEMENT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55197/qjssh.v5i5.486Keywords:
Human Capital Theory (HCT), predictive factors, English entrance competence, university majors of academic programme, STEMAbstract
Almost all universities have used students’ overall academic performance at the secondary or high school level as the primary measurement tool in determining the students’ placement into different tertiary academic programmes in hopes of their potential overall success in those programmes. The same is applied in the Malaysian context in line with the notion of Human Capital Theory (HCT) on a person’s success determined by the investment in their education. However, the importance of English language results in the Malaysian students’ national examination certificate is not rigorously considered as one of the primary measures in determining their tertiary level of English competence; instead, only a general passing or acceptable grade based on the offered programmes is used as the university or programme entrance pre-requisite. This may later be challenging for students as English is used in most of the academic references. Through secondary data analysis research design, this study examined 600 students’ collected database of Malaysia National Certificate or SPM English grade to see its determining effect on their English language entrance competence scores and their placement into different academic majors. It was found that their excellent English grades in their SPM were good determining measures of their university’s English Placement Test (EPT) and then exempted for the first-entry level diploma English course. Students with better English grades, accompanied with better EPT scores, mostly ended up in STEM programmes with higher levels of English competence than those students with lower English SPM grades and EPT scores. The advantage of reduced academic course workload shows that their English competence can be a determinant of their subsequent tertiary academic success. Future research may investigate the effects of their secondary and tertiary English on their CGPA and MUET scores and their future choice of academic programmes.
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