Mind your language

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Many universities in the region are investing heavily in improving their students' English language skills, but is it paying off?

When the University of Wollongong in Dubai recently announced that nearly half of its applicants had been rejected due to poor English skills, few in the region's higher education sector were surprised.

Many universities, both government and private, run English language programmes to improve applicants' chances of admission, but the loss of enrolments is adding up to lost revenue for the private institutions, and increased costs for public ones.

Bryan Zerbe, director of admissions at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, says applicants' English skills definitely play a role in the number of student the institution enrols. "Not all applicants have sufficient English skills," he says. "I'd say at least half do not meet our criteria."

Raymi van der Spek, vice president of administration at the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD), adds that "if the average student had better English skills, we could enrol more students. We have people who want to come and study and the only reason they can't is because their English isn't up to standard."

For public universities, offering remedial English programmes requires great investment in both faculty and resources. Robert Thompson, head of external relations and special projects at the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), says these are the highest costs federal universities incur.

"The bulk of money being spent at universities is on foundation programmes, because more students are in them." Dr Khalid Ali, director of Qatar University's (QU) foundation programme, agrees. "It costs a lot, 90% of students here have to take it."

QU's programme concentrates on giving students comprehensive English skills. "Students are good at memorising sections of a book and taking a test on that. But if you test them on how well they understand it, or ask them to apply what they learned, they don't do so well."

Ali also cites inadequate literacy skills as the weakness of most students. "One of the major problems is writing in English. It's difficult to change the problems of reading and writing in a one year programme. We are trying our best, but it's difficult."

Van der Spek points to further difficulty when some students equate speaking English with being able to read and write it.

"They ask if they really have to sit an English test, because in a discussion you would be led to believe there's nothing wrong with their English. Often their verbal English is OK, but it's their written communication skills that are poor."

Nevertheless, he points not to literacy skills as the main hindrance to university entrance, but exam preparation. UOWD, as with all other English-medium universities in the region, requires students to achieve a certain score on an international English language proficiency test as a condition of enrolment.

"It's not just about their English level," van der Spek says, "it's about their preparedness to sit a test. A lot of the applicants, if they simply were prepared on time, would have more opportunity to get the score they need."

Their lack of preparation and knowledge about the test, he continues, becomes apparent when the enrolment deadline approaches.

"We have people coming in at the last minute and saying they'd like to enrol, and when we ask for their English results, they ask how they're going to get those in such a short time. We never know what our enrolment's going to be until three weeks after the final enrolment date."

Preparing to take English language exams also proves difficult for postgraduate students, says Martin Prince, registrar at the British University in Dubai (BUiD).

"We have a number of applicants who we feel we can help to get up to the relevant English language standard; however, they're not always receptive to that help."

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READERS' COMMENTS

English
Posted by Marijke, Bahrain on Tuesday 4 November 2008 at 11:57 UAE time

The reason why in Holland young children are almost fluent in English has several reasons. First, there are only 2 other countries besides Holland that speak our language, so we have to learn other languages. Second, a lot of television in Holland is English spoken with Dutch subtitles. We are in general more exposed to the English language, also because of tourism in our country. Here in the Gulf I see people are good in spoken English, but their grammar is below level. I wonder from what age children are taught English at at what level. But it all starts with the quality of the teachers ofcourse.

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