English Proficiency and Academic Performance of Bilingual Filipino Students in the Tertiary Level

Abstract

The concept of second language acquisition (SLA) is a major concern in the field of second language teaching, especially in bilingual or multilingual classrooms. This study determined the relationship between English proficiency and academic performance of the students in the College of Business and Accountancy (CBA), College of Education (CED), and College of Engineering and Architecture (CEA) at a state university in Dumaguete City. The data from 862 tertiary students were retrieved from the database of the university registrar’s office. The results support the claim that English proficiency is significantly related to academic performance. However, such consistency is absent on the data derived from the CEA students. This finding implies that English proficiency may be less important in improving academic performance among CEA students than CED and CBA students. This finding suggests a possible mismatch between pre-admission English proficiency and the English proficiency required for learning highly technical academic requirements of an engineering course. The CEA curriculum may be reviewed for possible revision that could enhance the academic English proficiency as well as academic performance among the engineering students.