English Language Proficiency as a Predictor of Academic Achievement among Medical Students in Iran Bahador Sadeghi English Language Department, Islamic Azad University, Takestan, Iran Nima Moshtaghi Kashanian English Language Department, Islamic Azad University, Takestan, Iran Ataollah Maleki University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran Aliakbar Haghdoost Research Center for Modeling in Health, Institute for Future Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Iran Abstract—In Iran, many changes have been made in English language teaching. In academic grounds it is important to know the correlation between the expertise of students in English and their scores in different scientific subjects, before applying any further curriculum reform. The present study was designed to determine the correlation between English language proficiency and the achievement of medical students in their national comprehensive basic science exam (NCBSE). One hundred and fifty six students admitted in the academic years of 2008 and 2009 (60% female and 40% male) were enrolled for the present study. The results of General English and Scientific language courses, the average marks in five consecutive semesters and the NCBSE scores were extracted from their educational files. Data was analyzed using appropriated tests such as ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation and liner regression. The present data indicated that proficiency in English could significantly influence academic achievement of medical students. Furthermore, changes of policy in the students’ selection or teaching styles without preparation of necessary backgrounds including increasing their English knowledge could not significantly alter the achievement of Iranian medical students. Index Terms—English proficiency, academic achievement, correlation, national comprehensive basic science exam (NCBSE) I. INTRODUCTION English as a second or foreign language has gained much attention during the past decades in almost every country. In Iran English is taught as a foreign language in high-schools as well as in universities (Mirdehghan, HoseiniKargar, Navab, & Mahmoodi, 2011). Aside from different language courses presented in different levels of public academic centers, there are also private institutes that teach different levels of foreign language. As a branch of English language teaching, English for specific purposes (ESP) has gained much attention during recent years (Johns, 2013; Sarem, Hamidi, & Mahmoudie, 2013; Zaki, 2007). Primarily ESP was divided into English for science and technology (EST), English for business and economics (EBE) and English for social sciences (ESS) by Hutchinson (1987). According to him, medical studies is a branch of English for academic purposes or a branch of EST, and students in all medical fields should learn EST as part of their academic study. Furthermore, almost all original medical textbooks taught in universities are written in English. This should also be in mind that most communications through the Internet and scientific publications are in English too. Nevertheless, in countries such as Iran where English is not their native language, some of the scientific textbooks are or have been translated. Still English plays an important role in students’ academic carriers, helping them to improve and learn at a faster pace. For the mentioned reasons, Educational Ministries in Iran made it compulsory for all students in Iranian universities to take different English courses as part of their study to improve and enhance their proficiency over their objective courses. For the medical students under study, the English courses were presented in two different sections. The first section, called General English included 2x3 units, while in the second section students have to learn the specific language (EST) related to their objective courses. This part of their language learning was also comprised of 2x3 unites. The aim of the general English courses assigned is to teach the four general skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking, while their specific courses were administered so that students could progress further in their field of study by consulting ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 12, pp. 2315-2321, December 2013 © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.3.12.2315-2321 © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER