Insufficient Language Proficiency as a Barrier to Academic Success

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to address a barrier to my academic success. the specific
barrier I identified revolves around insufficient proficiency in academic language.
Insufficient language proficiency is a widespread problem among undergraduate university
students and a significant concern among academics (Kuiken and Vedder 3) . In the next
section, I explain the barrier in detail and describe the strategy to address it. The strategy is a
remedial program in academic writing.

The Barrier Explained

The barrier to academic success being considered in this paper is the lack of academic
language proficiency, also known as academic writing skills. Inadequate academic writing
skills inhibit the mastery of both general and discipline-specific vocabulary and knowledge of
particular syntactic and lexical patterns (Kuiken and Vedder 1) . The importance of academic
language proficiency in academic success has significantly increased in recent years due to
ever-rising admissions in higher learning institutions. Today, universities and colleges admit
national and international students from diverse backgrounds with different levels of
language abilities (Kuiken and Vedder 1-2) . These trends toward broader university
participation and internationalization of higher education are unlike before when universities
were highly selective, admitting only learners with the highest academic and language

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abilities (Kuiken and Vedder 1) . Language proficiency did not correlate strongly with
academic achievement because the student population was more linguistically similar back
then.
Insufficient academic language proficiency might be a significant problem to my
academic career because academic achievement at the higher education level demands
greater linguistic rigor than at lower levels of education (Kuiken and Vedder 3) . At the higher
education level, in addition to lower-order considerations like spelling and grammar,
academic language is characterized by higher-order features like the use of an impersonal and
detached yet authoritative stance; information load; complex argumentation and sentences;
specific organization of information and sophisticated word choices, including the use of
abstract and technical concepts. Mastery of these features requires effort and practice.

A Strategy for Overcoming the Barrier

Given the necessity of good academic writing skills in academic success, I propose to
improve my skills by joining a remedial program in academic writing. Because my institution
may not have such a program, or its program offering may be inadequate for my needs, I may
have to look to online resources for help. Such resources may include an online course aimed
at helping students in higher education become more proficient academic writers. I may also
need to look for an online platform to receive personalized support and feedback from a tutor
regarding my writing challenges. In addition, I may need to find a site that can help me raise
my academic oral presentation skills. Besides these online resources, I will find out if my
Department can assign me a mentor from among the Department’s faculty. I believe a
remedial program in academic writing and oral presentation can help me improve my
academic writing skills. Elsewhere, such a program has been shown to work for three-
quarters of students with low academic language proficiency (Kuiken and Vedder 8) .

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Conclusion

This paper has addressed an identified barrier to my academic success. Insufficient
proficiency in academic language and writing is widespread among undergraduate students.
However, it can be addressed through a remedial program in academic writing to tackle the
barrier. The strategy will work for me as it has worked for other students struggling with
mastery of academic writing.