Effect of language difficulties on results of engineering students

Abstract

Weak language ability has a deleterious effect on a student's academic performance. This paper reports an attempt to assess how big this effect might be for engineering students. We found that there is a measurable effect - in this case, as big a difference as 17 marks out of 100 - that could be ascribed to language skills. However, it is not clear what fraction of this mark deficit is language and what fraction is due to related issues such as culture.