LEXICAL COMPETENCE AMONG TERTIARY STUDENTS: TEACHER-STUDENT PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Lexical competence is an important skill for the attainment of full mastery of the four language skills in order to enable students to cope with academic tasks at tertiary level. Unfortunately, after going through a decade of compulsory English language classes at primary and secondary school, it is discerned that Malaysian learners still lack attainment of the necessary word-level knowledge to cope with their academic courses at institutions of higher learning. This study reports the level of lexical competence of a group of students of various language proficiency levels at an institution of higher learning in Malaysia. It also probes the reasons for the lack of competence from the learners’ and their teacher’s perspective on the extent the students are able to cope with their academic courses at the university. Recommendations are provided as to how we can reverse the situation and at least try to minimise the effects so that Malaysian learners can handle academic tasks successfully by improving language literacy via lexical competence.