Málfríður - 15.03.2010, Blaðsíða 18

what we are witnessing in Iceland is an interna-
tional phenomenon of decreased academic skills
among university students. For example, the ACT
(American College Testing) report on the 2009 grad-
uating class in the United States which is based on
the test results of almost 1.5 million students, states
that only 67% of American high school graduates
were prepared to pass a college level composition
course, and only 53% a college level social science
course (ACT, 2009, p. 8). Scores were even lower for
biology and algebra.
Evidence from Canada (whose 15 year olds scored
second-highest among the countries participating in
the PISA 2000 reading assessment) is not dissimilar,
although the evidence is more anecdotal and more
concerned with writing than reading. (However, it
should be noted that reading and writing skills are
closely linked.) Thirty per cent of first-year universi-
ty students do not pass the University of Waterloo’s
mandatory English entrance exam, “up from 25 per
cent five years ago” (So, 2010). In the same article,
R. K. Hemani of Simon Fraser University reports the
same trend in English proficiency at his university,
where 10% of incoming students do not qualify to
enrol in the university’s mandatory writing courses,
and instead need to take preparatory writing cours-
es.
I do not wish to minimise the results of the present
study, with about one fifth of incoming Science and
Engineering students seeming to have trouble read-
ing an English text related to their field. After all,
this seems to indicate the existence of a problem. But
it is worth asking the question as to whether this is
an English proficiency problem, a reading proficien-
cy problem, or an academic proficiency problem, for
the solution for each problem may be somewhat dif-
ferent.
Revised elementary, secondary and university
curricula are undoubtedly part of the solution, with
more focussed instruction on academic reading strat-
egies and/or academic thinking strategies required,
probably at all levels of education. But first, more
focussed research needs to be undertaken in stu-
dents’ cognitive and reading skills, in both English
and Icelandic, at all levels of education.
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