It’s easy to assume that once students cross the threshold into higher education, their English is “good enough” for the literacy demands ahead. Yet research keeps showing that academic reading & writing stretch even proficient users — & that small differences in core language proficiency can snowball into large differences in academic outcomes. A recent study by Justyna Mackiewicz & Danijela Trenkic at the University of York, published in Language Learning, digs into this issue with unusual depth, comparing British, European L2, & Chinese L2 first-year undergraduates across a comprehensive battery of linguistic & literacy measures.
Before getting into the study itself, it’s worth remembering the bigger picture: reading & writing at university are multicomponent processes drawing on vocabulary, grammar, decoding fluency, background knowledge, & working memory. Even strong L1 users can struggle with dense texts or timed exams. For L2 users, the load is heavier — especially when their incoming proficiency sits below the level needed for fluent processing [sec23].
The Study
Mackiewicz & Trenkic tested 177 first-year students: 59 British L1 speakers, 60 European L2 speakers, & 58 Chinese L2 speakers [sec105–sec112]. All had met typical UK entry requirements (IELTS 6.0 or pre-sessional pathways).
Students completed 12 measures covering vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing, reading efficiency, reading comprehension, spelling, & summarisation. Crucially, the researchers also controlled for nonverbal intelligence, working memory, & parental education.
The findings
The bottom line: linguistic distance matters — but vocabulary matters even more.
- Vocabulary gaps were huge. British students averaged 16.4k word families, Europeans 11.4k, Chinese students 7.4k.
- Reading speed differed sharply. British students read at 223 wpm, Europeans at 174, Chinese students at 133.
- Reading comprehension was strongly tied to speed. British students attempted more questions in the timed test, explaining much of their advantage.
- Writing showed similar patterns. Chinese students produced shorter summaries with more spelling errors & fewer content points.
But the most important finding came from the hierarchical regressions: once vocabulary & grammar were controlled for, group differences in reading & writing disappeared. In other words, the disparities weren’t about nationality, culture, or cognition — they were about language proficiency, especially vocabulary size.
This aligns with long-standing models of reading & writing that emphasise lexical access & processing efficiency as bottlenecks for higher-order comprehension.
Examples
Think of two students reading a dense academic text. One knows 15,000 word families; the other knows 7,000. Even if both “understand” the text, the first student recognises words automatically, freeing working memory for inference-making. The second must slow down, guess more often, & may struggle to finish within time limits. The same dynamic plays out in writing: if lexical retrieval is slow, fewer ideas make it onto the page within a timed task.
Teacher Takeaways?
- Vocabulary is not a “nice-to-have”. It’s the single strongest predictor of reading speed, comprehension & writing efficiency.
- Timed tasks amplify proficiency gaps. Untimed reading or extended-writing formats reduce inequity.
- European L2 learners are not a proxy for all L2 learners. Linguistic distance shapes incoming proficiency & processing efficiency.
What does this research make you rethink about what “proficiency” really means in academic settings?
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