Empirical evidence on English subskills approval, between sexes and face to face/on line tests in a not anglophone higher education institution

Abstract

Since 2017, The National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in México started requiring proof of competence of A1 English abilities in cases of specialties, two B1 abilities in cases of master's degrees, and three abilities in cases of doctorate programs as part of its graduate admission process.(it means competence in any of the language abilities). This vagueness motivated this investigation; it is based on the results of the English institutional exam from 2016-2019. We studied data using Pearson correlation, ANOVA, and Main Components Analysis. We found a higher average score for listening comprehension and lower performance on writing; reading comprehension explains 56.08% of the overall language dominance. Even we found some novel differences for speaking and writing among genders, we did not find conclusive differences among online tests - face to face tests. The speaking and the writing show the highest correlation. We outlined some suggestions for English admission requirements.