Predictive validity of the post-enrolment English language assessment tool for commencing undergraduate nursing students.

BACKGROUND: Nursing students with English as an additional language (EAL) may underperform academically. The post-enrolment English language assessment (PELA) is used in literacy support, but its predictive validity in identifying those at risk of underperformance remains unknown. OBJECTIVES: To validate a PELA, as a predictor of academic performance. DESIGN: Prospective survey design. SETTING: The study was conducted at a university located in culturally and linguistically diverse areas of western Sydney, Australia. PARTICIPANTS: Commencing undergraduate nursing students who were Australian-born (n=1323, 49.6%) and born outside of Australia (n=1346, 50.4%) were recruited for this study. The 2669 (67% of 3957) participants provided consent and completed a first year nursing unit that focussed on developing literacy skills. METHOD: Between 2010 and 2013, commencing students completed the PELA and English language acculturation scale (ELAS), a previously validated instrument. The grading levels of the PELA tool were: Level 1 (proficient), Level 2 (borderline), and Level 3 (poor, and requiring additional support). RESULTS: Participants with a PELA Level 2 or 3 were more likely to be: a) non-Australian-born (χ(2): 520.6, df: 2, p<0.001); b) spoke a language other than English at home (χ(2): 490.2, df: 2, p<0.001); and c) an international student (χ(2): 225.6, df: 2, p<0.001). There was an inverse relationship between participants' ELAS scores and PELA levels (r=-0.52, p<0.001), and those graded as 'proficient' with a PELA Level 1 were more likely to obtain higher scores in their: i) unit essay assessment (χ(2): 40.2, df: 2, p<0.001); ii) final unit mark (χ(2): 218.6, df: 2, p<0.001), and attain a higher GPA (χ(2): 100.8, df: 2, p<0.001). CONCLUSION: The PELA is a useful screening tool in identifying commencing nursing students who are at risk of academic underachievement.

Discipline matters: embedding academic literacies into an undergraduate nursing program.

In recent years the higher education sector in Australia has been increasingly concerned with ensuring that the English language proficiency levels of students are commensurate with the academic and professional tasks that they must perform. In many universities, this heightened attention to language proficiency has driven changes to teaching and learning practices. This paper reports on a project to embed academic literacies development into a core first year subject within a Bachelor of Nursing program in a large, culturally and linguistically diverse, metropolitan university. Prior to the commencement of their nursing program 747 students completed a Post Enrolment Language Assessment. Students who required additional support were advised to enroll in tutorials which included an additional literacy focus. These tutorials were part of the normal tutorial program for this nursing subject. Students with lower level language skills who attended the streamed tutorial with additional literacy support showed a greater improvement in their written communication than those with similar language proficiency who attended non-streamed tutorials. Evidence suggests that this improvement was transferred into writing tasks in other non-streamed subjects. The findings reported in this paper highlights that discipline specific embedded strategies are an effective approach to the development of academic literacies.