Dear Khalid Salim Al-Jardani,

The English language skills of students are progressively more under the spotlight due to the monumental impact of globalization on the tertiary and higher education. Those who are about to enter tertiary education should achieve the English language proficiency in the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking).

Regards

I am looking for studies/research on this topic, if any

I found an article may satisfy your request. See the abstract first and if you are interested I can send you full article.

Title: Hong Kong tertiary students' attitudes and proficiency in spoken English

by Littlewood, William; Liu, Ngar-Fun; Yu, Christine

Abstract: 

As a basis for making pedagogical decisions within a learner-based framework, teachers need information about the experiences and perceptions which learners bring to the classroom. This article reports and discusses some of the information gathered by the LEAP Project at the University of Hong Kong about the English learning experiences, proficiency and perceptions of students entering tertiary education in Hong Kong. The article focuses on students' oral English. The investigation reveals that students who enter tertiary education in Hong Kong have grown accustomed to passive speech roles in class and had limited experience of speaking. Lack of practice often leads to low confidence in their own ability and a sense of unease, especially when engaging in unplanned speech. Nonetheless students express strong preferences for active speaking roles in class. A two-folded strategy is needed. In their English classes, students need many more opportunities to activate their language and gain experience in using it for spontaneous communication. At the same time, in all classes, students need to gain experience of active methods of learning, so that they can adopt the active, questioning role which is appropriate for tertiary level learning and required for success in the modem world. Adapted from the source document

And another is here :

ARE THEY READY? EXPLORING STUDENT INFORMATION LITERACY SKILLS IN THE TRANSITION FROM SECONDARY TO TERTIARY EDUCATION

How information literate are the Google generation, and what information literacy skills do they bring to university? For university libraries, understanding student prior knowledge provides a foundation on which to introduce appropriate learning activities during the first year. In 2009, in response to a new pedagogical model in health sciences, La Trobe University Library measured and analysed the entry-level information literacy skills of first year health science students. The data was gathered during the first week of semester and 1,029 responses were collected. This paper examines the results of the survey and its implications for programs that broaden and build on students' existing knowledge base.

How information literate are first year students, and what information literacy skills do they bring to university? In the university environment, information literacy is like other fundamental capabilities that support learning and need to be developed early in the first year of study. Information literacy and learning are intertwined. In general, awareness of how to find and use information facilitates learning in the tertiary environment (Lupton, 2008). More specifically, information literacy is a threshold concept that is critical to learning about research and the research process. In order to succeed, students need to grasp and assimilate an understanding of information literacy: both the lower order skills needed to find and access resources, and the higher order thinking required to use and evaluate information.

Students come to university with "a range of prior knowledge, skills, beliefs and concepts that significantly influence what they notice about the environment and how they organize and interpret it" (Bransford 2000: 10). Just as new knowledge is constructed from existing knowledge, new understandings of scholarly information and research are influenced by prior experience of finding and using information. However, when it comes to information literacy, it is generally accepted by academic librarians that the information skills of incoming first year students are limited in terms of expected capabilities for university research (Ellis & Salisbury, 2004; Guise, Goosney, Gordon & Pretty, 2007; Hufford, 2010; Mittermeyer, 2005; Rowlands, 2008; Russell, 2009 and Hartmann 2001). While it is not surprising, nor should it be expected, that commencing students are ready and equipped for discovering and using scholarly information, it should also not be assumed that this lack of readiness and awareness means students are information illiterate.

Academic librarians need to recognise that building research skills doesn't necessarily always begin in the first year. Existing skills represent a milestone along the lifelong information literacy learning continuum and provide a starting point for building and refining existing skills to suit the university environment. Understanding prior knowledge has the potential to shift our perspective of first year students as having limited skills (and need to learn everything from scratch) to a perception that incoming students have a degree of information literacy which includes a range of skills that can be harnessed and extended to embrace scholarly literacy. It opens up possibilities to improve learning activities so that they are more relevant to students' existing skill set and rtiore likely to support students in their trajectories from peripheral to more engaged participation in learning about university research.

This paper examines the findings from a survey of the entry-level information literacy skills of first year health sciences students. It is a step towards understanding the prior information literacy knowledge of first year students at La Trobe University, and has broader implications for how we understand readiness for library research as well as for the future development of information literacy programs.

3- Comparing Language  Use in the Writing  of Developmental Generation 1.5, L1, and  L2 Tertiary Students

Abstract: 

Developmental composition courses serve a sizable and growing number

of Generation 1.5 students, or long-term U.S. resident language learners,

and it is believed that language challenges may be part of Generation 1.5

writers’ difficulty in controlling the academic register. The current study

investigates possible similarities and differences between Generation 1.5

students (n = 149) and two other student groups: mainstream first language

(L1) writers (n = 203) and more traditional second language (L2) writers

(n = 55), thus determining the extent to which language-use variables

distinguish Generation 1.5 texts from those of their classmates. Results

indicate significant differences between Generation 1.5 and L2 students on

holistic writing quality, word errors, word class errors, verb errors, total

identified errors, and spoken features of language. Generation 1.5 and L1

texts significantly differed on academic features of language. Implications are

presented, suggesting that developmental Generation 1.5 writing may be

more similar to L1 writing than has been previously reported.

This seems interesting Dr. Majid

Please send it via email. Although, I am more interested on studies from our context- Oman if any!

If we look at our internal needs, the level of proficiency in a foreign language can be limited to reading and writing skills. What was once called "instrumental language." It happens that we are in a new world. There are so much out there, so many good videos, so many classes scientists are ready to share with the world that I can not understand if the goal for language acquisiton should be something less than proficiency is all the communicative skills. There can be a tolerance, say students can be admitted if they can read a foreign language, but to stop there when the student needs  will never stop.  The official policy can say that reading ability is enough, but this is not that smart. We have to be sure that the lagislator for that issue is a globalized world. No matter what a leader in the educational system will say, not being proficient in at least one foreign language is to leave our students in cruel isolation. They will go as far as their minds can reach.

Vilemar Magalhaes

Thanks for this. This is interesting!

In case you found any research on same matter or similar, please let me know.

Thanks again.