Is Language Proficiency Relevant in the Study Programme?

At Ghent University, we educate our students to be astute communicators,  which is an essential skill in our network society.  Students enhance their communication skills by training in academic and professional language skills during their studies.  In most study programmes, these linguistic learning outcomes are situated in both areas: good academic writing skills are a prerequisite to completing the Master’s dissertation, laid down by law. Professional language proficiency is necessary for professional practice.

 

A student’s level of (academic) language proficiency also impacts their study progress and ultimate study success.  A poor mastery of the language of instruction (Dutch and English) impedes knowledge acquisition. However, not all students can acquire the required language proficiency during their study programme individually. These students need support. 

 

Enhancing students’ language proficiency is an essential part of Ghent University’s structural and integral language policy.  An effective language policy ensures a more successful study progress and study success, as well as a proper level of language competency for (an initial) professional practice.  

Academic and Professional Language Proficiency: a Ghent University Definition 

The word ‘language proficiency’ is often defined very narrowly, limiting it to a correct language form: spelling, grammar and punctuation.  At Ghent University, however, we opt for a broader definition of academic and professional language proficiency and define both terms following the example of the Nederlandse Taalunie (Union for the Dutch Language) and VLIR (Flemish Interuniversity Council). 

 

Academic language proficiency consists of three components: language cognition, skills and attitude.  These components are strongly interrelated: students cannot acquire and develop them separately from one another. 

• The component of ‘language cognition’ comprises everything students implicitly and explicitly know about academic language: linguistic proficiency (e.g. spelling, structure), discipline-specific knowledge (e.g. academic style, jargon), familiarity with procedures (e.g. strategies to understand how argumentation is developed) and metacognition (reflecting about one's academic language proficiency).  
• The ‘skills’ component comprises the four skill domains of linguistic action: reading, listening, speaking and writing. 

• The ‘attitude’ component refers to the attitude towards academic language (proficiency), whether or not taught, in an academic context.  Examples of attitudes with a positive impact on academic proficiency are the willingness to adopt an academic register, precision, critical mindset, self-reflection and daringness.  

Professional language proficiency covers the language proficiency required for specific job profiles.  At Ghent University, we consider this to be good communication and co-operation skills, for example being able to communicate clearly with a target audience, within the own discipline as well as at a multidisciplinary level, reacting to delicate issues properly, etcetera. Examples of these language tasks can be found in the How to Put Language Proficiency into (Your Teaching) Practice section.

How to Integrate Academic and Professional Language Proficiency into Learning Outcomes? 

Language Proficiency as a Goal

If you look at Ghent University's Competency Model, fostering academic and professional language proficiency has been placed under the fourth competency area, i.e.  ‘Co-operation and Communication’.  On the one hand, study programmes will engage in academic writing skills, predominantly in preparation for the Master’s dissertation (DS-0010).  On the other hand, some study programmes formulate competencies given the existing and future job profiles (DS-0003, DS-0015 and DS-0016).

The examples below show how a study programme can formulate specific linguistic learning outcomes. The illustrated competency model can also serve as inspiration. 

The Philosophy programme: 

• to effectively communicate research findings with both experts and non-experts, both orally and in writing. 

The Mathematics programme:

• to effectively present original research, thoughts, ideas, or opinions in a professional context, including a second language. 
• to effectively communicate with both experts and non-experts, orally and in writing, regarding new developments, underlying rationales, and opinion-making in the discipline and related fields. 
• to work in a project-based manner in a mathematical context: setting objectives, focused reporting, monitoring end goals and the development path.

The Veterinary Medicine programme, main subject Companion Animals:

• to be able to effectively communicate in writing with professional colleagues and other highly educated audiences, in Dutch or English, regarding scientific and clinical research findings;  

• to be able to fluently communicate orally with professional colleagues and other highly educated audiences, in Dutch or English, about scientific and clinical research results; 

• to be able to communicate scientific and clinical information clearly to individuals without a strong academic background, including pet owners in a veterinary practice, while upholding confidentiality and privacy;

• to possess the communicative skills to handle difficult situations (handling dissatisfied pet owners or a bad-news conversation) in the practice.  

Language Proficiency as a Means for Study Progress

If study programmes invest in academic language acquisition, they can avoid situations where a student's insufficient mastery of the language of instruction hinders their study progress. This ties in with the strategic objective of ‘talent development’ (DS-0029), which states, among other things, that a study programme has to optimise student intake, study progress and study success, with an eye for diversity in the student population. Clear communication is essential for academic language acquisition, both in written and in spoken teaching materials (DS-0020, DS-0021). In other words, study programmes should focus on their students’ language skills and also on their lecturers’ language skills. A study progress-oriented approach does not involve separate learning outcomes for language. Instead, this approach demonstrates that language skills are essential for various competencies such as assessment, work placement, quality assurance, internationalisation, and diversity. 

How to Put Language Proficiency into (Your Teaching) Practice?

Linguistic support, often in the form of seperate language assignments, is mostly offered outside of the curriculum because this is more feasible and practical. However, research has shown that an integrated approach is more appropriate to improve the students' language skills. This means that language should be taught and assessed in conjunction with content throughout the curriculum. Study programmes should investigate how to develop, implement and/or optimise this integral approach logically and thus ideally create a curricular strand for language skills.

How to develop such a curricular strand? 

• First, check if the idea can count on sufficient support within the programme (committee). If this is not the case, you could try to foster that support by demonstrating the need for language skills through the operational objectives of the Education Monitors, in terms of academic writing skills and professional language proficiency. 
• Gather like-minded colleagues with decision-making power in a task force. The Programme Committee can mandate that task force to develop the curricular strand.   If this line of action is not possible, you can bring up the topic again when the Programme Committee wants to implement a curricular revision or a new curricular strand. In the task force scenario, the first to-do would be to inventory all the points to consider: which means are available? More specifically, this concerns staff members, room occupation, time investment, ICT support, etc. The analysis will show what is practically feasible. 
• Once these practicalities are settled, the task force can focus on the content. Start from the linguistic learning outcomes - academic and professional - and link these to the starting competencies, provided that these are very clear. What level of language proficiency can one expect from first-year Bachelor’s students?  The final attainment levels of secondary education can serve as a guideline. Apart from those, at Ghent University we have opted to check the required minimum level through the the SIMON says test. We advise against any official language test because they only give ever a random indication and make it very challenging to offer adequate remediation. A better approach is to set the students specific language assignments with accompanying feed-up and feedback early on in the academic year (the first few weeks). For example, you could ask students to write a summary of a short scholarly article.  Give them clear instructions, including an overview and various good examples. This way, students know what level of language proficiency is expected of them.
• Next, the task force maps the existing language assignments. Each study programme has integrated writing and speaking assignments in the curriculum (apart from language classes), anyway. More often than not, these are not really in alignment with one another.  Reveal possible overlap and gaps, and ensure a vertical and horizontal structure.  The vertical structure implies language assignments become progressively difficult year after year. The horizontal structure means that there is a clear coherence between course units in which language skills are included within one standard study track year.
• Make sure that the language assignments are appropriate. Consider adding extra assignments, if necessary.  
  • If your study programme wants to invest in the quality of Master’s dissertations, integrate academic writing assignments in each standard study track year. It allows students to practice typical academic language use gradually, i.e. using abstract vocabulary, developing cognitive skills and logic, and combining several resources. An example can be found in the Biomedical Sciences programme:
    • in the first year, students are asked to write an exploratory paper. They choose a topic, look for academic resources, and define their research question. The assignment comprises a description of their search strategies, the selection of potentially interesting articles, and a personal reflection;
    • in the second year, they work with a topic that was assigned to them, determine their research question and choose five primary articles to use.  Based on those articles, they write two sections of an academic review, i.e. 'materials and methods’, and ‘results’;
    • in the third year, they elaborate these sections into a complete review, including an abstract, an introduction, a discussion, a conclusion, etc. 
  • To foster professional language skills, a study programme can implement various job-specific language actions through which the student demonstrates they can take into account contextual, social and pragmatic factors. Examples of such authentic learning assignments can be found in communication: 
    • communicating with a specific target group: the bad news conversation, the lawyer-client conversation, etc. 
    • communicating within one's discipline: meeting minutes, a letter from a general practictioner to a specialist practitioner, etc. 
    • interdisciplinary communication: an email conversation between a physiotherapist, psychologist, doctor, etc. 

• Incorporate these language assignments into existing course units. It is an approach that will allow you to work on language competencies as well as on the students’ study progress.  Ideally, you start with a course unit’s learning content and take it from there to practice academic or professional language proficiency. If this is not an option, you could consider a separate course unit on academic language proficiency. In that case, it is essential to establish links between the language and the other course units.   Students will more likely see the benefits and have an easier time transferring what they have learnt as opposed to in a complementary course unit with entirely different content. 

• A curricular strand on language skills can only become a success if there is adequate coaching for the various language assignments. Train your lecturers in the didactics of language development. This supports students in the language acquisition process: ideally, lecturers do not have an eye for active, language-stimulating methods alone, but also for linguistic feedback and assessment of language proficiency. 

How to Assess Language Proficiency? 

Since any type of exam requires language skills, these skills are assessed implicitly in each course unit. However, that does not mean that every linguistic error merits a loss of points. This can only be the case if the course sheet lists language proficiency as a learning outcome explicitly, and if language skills are trained in class. 

Use Rubrics

Correct language use can be assessed in specific academic and professional language assignments which list it among the learning outcomes: e.g. a presentation or a writing assignment. Use a rubric to increase the reliability of the assessment. A rubric is a list of assessment criteria with predetermined scores or quality levels. For writing assignments, Ghent University’s Academic Writing Checklist can serve as inspiration. 

Assessing Linguistic Competencies: a Discussion at Programme Level 

Make clear agreements on the rubrics you will use. This will make for an assessment that is uniform and reliable throughout the curriculum. A curricular strand on language proficiency requires a common set of assessment criteria and tools. The latter should be a recurring topic of discussion for Programme Committees and Examination Boards. 

Additionally, install a sufficient number of assessment moments: each learning outcome should be assessed at least twice.  The competency matrix is a convenient tool to map where, how and which aspects of the learning outcomes occur in teaching and assessment practice.  

 

Want to Know More?

• Berckmoes D. & Rombouts, H. (2010). Academische taalvaardigheid voor elke student. De meerwaarde van een taalmonitoraat op maat. In: D. Van Hoyweghen (red.), Naar taalkrachtige lerarenopleidingen. Mechelen: Plantyn.
• De Wachter L., Heeren, J., Marx, S. & Huyghe, S. (2013). Taal: noodzakelijke, maar niet enige voorwaarde tot studiesucces. Correlatie tussen resultaten van een taalvaardigheidstoets en slaagcijfers bij eerstejaarsstudenten aan de KU Leuven. In: Levende Talen Tijdschrift Jaargang 14, nummer 4 
• Herelixka C. & Verhulst S. (2014): ‘Nederlands in het hoger onderwijs; een verkennende literatuurstudie naar taalvaardigheid en taalbeleid’, in opdracht van de Nederlandse Taalunie
• Raad voor de Nederlandse Taal en Letteren & het algemeen secretariaat van de Taalunie (2013). Startnotitie Nederlands in het hoger onderwijs, Nederlandse Taalunie  
• Raad voor de Nederlandse Taal en Letteren (2015). Adviesrapport Vaart met taalvaardigheid. Nederlands in het hoger onderwijs, Nederlandse Taalunie 
• VLIR-nota (2016). Talige startcompetenties voor het universitair onderwijs. 
• Van den Branden, K. (2015). Onderwijs voor de 21ste eeuw. Een boek voor leerkrachten en ouders. Leuven: ACCO