Correlation of Academic Excellence and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency at University Level

Abstract

In recent years, many second and foreign language programs have recognized the importance of Academic language proficiency and consider it to be a central goal of language teaching programs. Students need to use their second language for demanding tasks, for business, science, politics, and in all aspects of their lives. This calls for a focus on identifying and measuring the linguistic knowledge and skills that students will need in order to meet the heavy demands that life places on them.  English literacy is considered to be correlated with academic performance for both the foreign language learner and the second language learner. Language proficiency had been thought as one of the influential attribute of academic excellence in schools and colleges.  Students with good knowledge of English were considered to be better equipped with deep understanding of the content subjects. The majority of them are well settled in the global market because of their superior thinking and communicative competence. Considerable research has been conducted on the relationship of English language proficiency and academic performance among non-native English speakers around the globe. Through a descriptive method, this paper, titled, “Correlation of Academic Excellence and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency at University Level” presents a set of assumptions and hypotheses premeditated to intensify the perceptive of academic proficiency in relation to academic performance.

Keywords: Academic language proficiency, academic performance, communicative competence, correlation.