English language proficiency, academic language difficulties and self-efficacy: a comparative study of international and home students in UK higher education

In many Anglophone countries, international students constitute a significant proportion of university students. These students generally achieve lower academic performance than home students, with English language proficiency playing an important role. However, limited studies have compared international and home students’ academic expectations and experiences, explored how language proficiency relates to reported academic difficulties, and teased apart the influence of domicile (home vs. international) and language status (English as a foreign language, EFL vs. English as a native language, ENS). Furthermore, many studies overrepresented Chinese students, potentially affecting the generalisability. This study addresses these gaps by comparing UK home students and three international student groups: international ENS students, Chinese EFL students, and other EFL students worldwide. Employing both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches, the study conducted a large-scale survey of university students across the UK (N = 1163) and a follow-up survey from a smaller subset of students at one university (N = 59). Students self-rated their a) English skills, b) academic language difficulties, and c) self-efficacy. They also completed an embedded English vocabulary test to estimate their language proficiency. In addition, qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews (N = 18) to get in-depth insights into students’ language-related experiences. The findings confirmed that EFL groups had lower English proficiency than ENS groups, irrespective of ENS students’ domicile. Chinese students had the lowest proficiency and reported the most difficulties in their studies. However, home students, despite scoring high on both objective and subjective measures of English proficiency, reported more difficulties with academic English than both international ENS and mixed EFL groups, and lower academic self-efficacy compared to international ENS students. While challenges for EFL students (especially those from China) were mainly linguistic, those for ENS students were mostly academic. This emphasises the need for tailored language-related academic support for all student groups.