The validation of a measure to identify academic English skills that matter for tertiary education

Since students’ academic English levels have been well researched to positively influence students’ academic success in English-medium universities, it has been the common practice for these universities to provide general English for academic purposes (EAP) support for linguistically weaker students. However, there is a lack of understanding in the importance of different EAP skills as perceived by instructors, and this might hinder the quality of the EAP provisions to prepare students from different academic backgrounds for their degree programmes. The current study aimed to fill in this gap by examining instructors’ perceptions of students’ academic English skills in tertiary education, regarding which academic English skills and areas might be perceived as more important in that particular subject for the degree programme. The 42-item Faculty Survey Instrument developed by Rosenfeld et al. to assess the importance of English competency in reading, writing, listening and speaking for academic success of university studies was adapted, and the Rasch analyses confirmed four skills perceived by instructors across disciplines as important for students’ university studies. The findings could provide direct insights to the development of EAP provisions in the English-medium universities to better help students to prepare for their academic studies in different disciplines.