The Role of “Radical Change” In Medium-of-Instruction and its Impact on Academic Achievements

Today, English is renowned as the dominating language in the world and as medium of instruction, it plays central role in the students’ learning and academic performance at university level. This paper presents a retrospective study aiming to empirically test the theoretical Academic Achievement model for the perceived impact of the medium of instruction. Itexplores the effect of English as medium of instruction on academic performance. For this retrospective study, a self-made questionnaire was used to collect the data from 300 university students by using the stratified random sampling with proportional allocation. To confirm the chosen variables, Confirmatory factor analysis is used. This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to identify the criticaldimensions in the model. This leads to thedevelopment of an Academic achievement model with the path coefficients showing weak to strong relationships rangingfrom 0.127 to 0.691 with acceptable significance levels. The results support the hypothesis thatgood learning in English language does not only rely on the English language knowledge, but other factors such as students’ ability and talent, communication skills, supportive teacher and supportive home environment, motivation and the right attitude towards language also affect the learning and Academic achievementboth directly and indirectly.