Ponnudurai Gnanajothy, Caszo Brinnell, Gnanou Justin
School of Medicine, IMU University, Kuala Lumpur, 57000, Malaysia.
BMC Med Educ. 2025 Jul 1;25(1):945. doi: 10.1186/s12909-025-07348-8.
English proficiency in higher education is strongly associated with a student's overall academic performance. For instance, written assignments, which are a key component of continuous assessment, heavily depend on the student's proficiency in English. Therefore, students with good English proficiency are more likely to perform better in these types of assessments. In the Malaysian context, studies have shown that English proficiency is still lacking among undergraduate university students. These studies were based on students' perceptions of their own English proficiency. Readability tools provide an objective way of assessing a student's English proficiency. Hence, the aim of this study was to objectively evaluate English proficiency by analysing the readability of reflective reports written by first-year medical students.
Reflective reports written by first-year medical students (n = 114) as part of an assignment, were used to assess the English proficiency in this study. Typically, these reflective reports were the opinion of the student on a particular activity or topic and were on average, 1000 words long. These reports were analysed using four different types of well-established English proficiency assessment tools: Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade level, Gunning Fog, and SMOG index assessment. The reflective reports were categorised into grade levels based on the respective rubrics. The average readability indices from the four tools were calculated, graded, and assessed according to the rubric for each of these indices to determine if they matched the expected level for a first-year undergraduate medical student.
Our study findings revealed that 61.8% of reports matched the level of English standard for a first-year university student using the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Analysis. Using Gunning Fog analysis, we found that 10-20% of reports fell in each of the "college" categories - college freshman, college sophomore, college junior, college senior, suggesting that most of the students had good English proficiency. Consistent across all four assessments is that approximately < 10% of the reports were below the required English proficiency (8th to 9th grade or high school junior).
Our findings highlight that most students in the first year of medical school had English proficiency matching their education requirements. Though this is encouraging, it is also important to note that there are students with poor English proficiency. Future studies can be focused on studying the reasons behind low English proficiency among these students, as well as how it may affect them psychologically and their academic performance.
高等教育中的英语水平与学生的整体学业成绩密切相关。例如，作为持续评估关键组成部分的书面作业，很大程度上取决于学生的英语水平。因此，英语水平良好的学生在这类评估中更有可能取得更好的成绩。在马来西亚的背景下，研究表明本科大学生的英语水平仍然不足。这些研究基于学生对自身英语水平的认知。可读性工具提供了一种客观评估学生英语水平的方法。因此，本研究的目的是通过分析一年级医学生撰写的反思报告的可读性来客观评估英语水平。
本研究使用一年级医学生（n = 114）作为作业一部分撰写的反思报告来评估英语水平。通常，这些反思报告是学生对特定活动或主题的看法，平均长度为1000字。使用四种不同类型的成熟英语水平评估工具对这些报告进行分析：弗莱施-金凯德易读性、弗莱施-金凯德年级水平、冈宁雾度和烟雾指数评估。根据各自的评分标准将反思报告分类为不同年级水平。计算四种工具的平均可读性指数，根据每个指数的评分标准进行分级和评估，以确定它们是否符合一年级本科医学生的预期水平。
我们的研究结果显示，使用弗莱施-金凯德易读性分析，61.8%的报告符合一年级大学生的英语标准水平。使用冈宁雾度分析，我们发现10%-20%的报告落在每个“大学”类别中——大学一年级、大学二年级、大学三年级、大学四年级，这表明大多数学生有良好的英语水平。在所有四项评估中一致的是，约<10%的报告低于所需的英语水平（八年级至九年级或初中）。
我们的研究结果突出表明，大多数医学院一年级学生的英语水平符合他们的教育要求。虽然这令人鼓舞，但也需要注意的是，有一些学生英语水平较差。未来的研究可以专注于研究这些学生英语水平低的背后原因，以及这可能如何在心理上影响他们及其学业成绩。
