Early English Language Assessment to Improve First-Year Student Success

This evidence-based practice paper reports on the first trial of two language screening and diagnostic instruments at two research intensive institutions, the University of Toronto in a large city and Queens University in a mid-sized city, partly in response to the growing linguistic diversity of the student body. The universities chose to use the Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA) jointly developed by the University of Auckland and the University of Melbourne, both of which had similar student demographics to the Canadian universities. DELNA has two parts, a screening and a diagnostic. The screening comprises a vocabulary section and a speed reading section that screen for academic vocabulary knowledge and academic literacy. The diagnostic is a written exercise that provides a finer grained analysis of student language use. The two universities chose to design and administer a diagnostic specific to an engineering faculty rather than the arts and humanities focus of the DELNA diagnostic. The screening revealed that although a majority of the students performed strongly on the vocabulary section of the screening, they performed much less strongly on the reading, indicating a weakness in academic literacy. The written diagnostic confirmed this and also revealed a number of different clusters of strengths and weaknesses, helping to dispel the myth, held by many students, that they just need help “fixing their grammar”. These preliminary findings indicate the need for further research, especially on the impact of identifying and providing relevant support for students on their ability to participate and perform in their courses.