Application of Principal Component Analysis on English Proficiency among Technical University Students

Journal of Environmental Treatment Techniques

2021, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages: 37-43

J. Environ. Treat. Tech.

ISSN: 2309-1185

Journal web link: http://www.jett.dormaj.com

https://doi.org/10.47277/JETT/9(1)43

Application of Principal Component Analysis on

English Proficiency among Technical University

Students

Siti Zahariah Abdul Wahab *, Yasmin Yahya , Norhatta Mohd , Nurul Sharaz Azmanuddin ,

Nurhadiana Nurulmatin ²

¹Applied Statistics and Data Science Cluster (ASADS), Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Information Technology (UniKL MIIT), 1016 Jalan

Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Information Technology (UniKL MIIT), 1016 Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Received: 29/06/2020

Accepted: 05/10/2020

Published: 10/10/2020

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the level of English proficiency among students from Universiti Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian

Institute of Information Technology (UniKL MIIT). This study also observed the relationship between the level of four main skills: Reading,

Writing, Listening and Speaking by distributing an online questionnaire to 116 students from bachelor programme. The data was then

analysed using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the dataset. The research findings revealed that the

students’ level of Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking proficiency are intermediate. The findings also showed that there is a significant

relationship between each Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking proficiency of the students. On the other hand, the finding also reflects

that students acquired the lowest in writing skill. Finally, the research draws conclusion and recommendations based on the level of students’

English Proficiency and the ways to improve students’ achievement in English.

Keywords: Data analysis, Principal Component, Eigenvector, English proficiency

communication skill (Nan, 2018). In fact, listening and speaking

Introduction

are crucial skills that are correlated in real circumstances. To

achieve an effective communication, one must listen and

understand the conversation in order to respond in an

understandable language (Sadiku, 2015). Apart from that, a

student needs to master reading and writing skills since these two

skills are very associated. This is to ensure an effective written

communication can be achieved.

Furthermore, English proficiency is the main requirement for

students to go for a job interview. Most of the companies in

Malaysia looking for candidates who can converse and voice out

ideas in English fluently. The goal of this study was to investigate

the level of English proficiency among University Kuala Lumpur

English is recognized as the world's intermediate language.

Million people all over the world speak English as their first

language. Undeniably, English has become a global language and

it is very significant in the world trade, international relations,

technological advances, science, medicine and education. English

is not only a language, but it is a skill that one must have to grow

and excel in this challenging world. Today, Malaysia uses English

as a second language and most of the universities in Malaysia use

English as the dominant language in the classroom. Moreover, all

the lecture notes, assignment questions and exam questions are

also in English.

Looking at the vast importance of English to the worldwide,

every student is required to learn this language so that at least they

can read and write in English. However, acquiring and mastering

only reading and writing skills are not enough in order to become

a competitive student. As a great student, he must be able to read,

write, listen and speak the language well. These four skills,

reading, listening, writing and speaking should be integrated in

order to have good English proficiency and develop students’

(

UniKL MIIT) students based on the four main English language

proficiency skills namely reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was employed to evaluate

the data throughout this study. The following research questions

were addressed in this study:

a) Is there any relationship between the four main skills:

Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking?

Corresponding author: Siti Zahariah Abdul Wahab, Applied Statistics and Data Science Cluster (ASADS), Universiti Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian Institute of Information Technology (UniKL MIIT), 1016 Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

sitizahariah@unikl.edu.my

Journal of Environmental Treatment Techniques

2021, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages: 37-43

out their opinion and ideas in the most appropriate way either

during presentation or even discussion.

b) What is the students’ level of English proficiency for

the four main skills?

c) What is the performance of PCA on the students’

.2 Factors that Hinder the Mastery of the Students’ Reading,

English proficiency based on the four main skills?

Writing, Speaking and Listening Skills

There are many factors that can hinder the mastery of the

students’ reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. These

obstacles are sometimes realised clearly by the students and

sometimes undetected. Reading habit for example needs to be

natured from childhood. Nowadays, students do not like to read

book especially English book (Rachman, 2018). Many students

are demotivated to read English reading materials because they

do not understand the meaning. Lack of the vocabulary makes the

students refused to read English book. There are some English

words which are spelt the same but bring different meanings and

connotations. This makes students confused and misinterpret the

whole text. Complex and long sentences with many clauses will

also hinder students’ understanding.

Apart from reading, writing is the way people express their

thoughts and emotions with visible signs and it is understandable

not only for themselves but also for other people (Indrilla &

Ciptaningrum, 2018). Writing is one of the core English

competences. In a study conducted by David et. al (2015), the data

analysis found that writing was the hardest and most complex

skill students had to master. This is supported by Javed et. al

(2013) where they stated that even English speakers have

problems in demonstrating good writing command. Nevertheless,

research studies have shown that students are not inspired and

willing to develop their language skill, particularly their writing

skills (David et. al, 2015).

Several students are also very afraid to speak English because

they are nervous to use the language. Malaysian students

especially are reluctant to communicate in English because they

felt embarrassed and they want to look good when speaking in

English. This attitude restricts them to speak English because they

are afraid to make even one mistake while speaking (Rusli et. al,

2018). Furthermore, some schools are still implementing the

classical way of teaching where the teachers apply one-way

communication and have less interaction with the students. This

will make students feel comfortable in their own zone which

hinder the mastery of the speaking skill.

The objectives of the study are as below:

a) To determine the significant correlation between the

four main skills: Reading, Writing, Listening and

Speaking.

b) To identify the students’ level of English proficiency

for the four main skills.

c) To determine the performance of PCA on the students’

English proficiency based on the four main skills.

Literature Review

.1 The Importance of Mastering Reading, Writing, Speaking

and Listening

Reading, writing, speaking and listening are the four

foundational skills of language learning that complement each

other. In order to be a well-rounded person who can be fluent in

English language learning, a very strong foundation is needed to

ensure someone can fully utilize the skills acquired. The

importance of mastering the four skills are necessarily crucial

especially to students.

Reading is a method for communicating via the written form

and it is the most powerful way of gaining knowledge on many

aspects of life including Science and Technology. Reading can

improve students’ vocabulary. In reading, students will be

exposed to a variety of new words and it can be used in writing

and speaking session. This skill is important to students in high

school or university since most of the academic textbooks are in

English. If students cannot understand English, it will be hard for

them to understand the subject and they will be left out in class.

Besides reading, good English writing is also an important

factor for academic growth. It is necessary for career development

(

Mathew Nalliveettil & Mahasneh, 2017). This is because writing

helps to strengthen the grammatical structure and enhance the

students’ vocabulary. Students need this skill to do assignments,

reports, take notes in class and do exams (Indrilla

Ciptaningrum, 2018).

Another important skill is listening as it is one of the main

channels for language learning. Listening can be considered as the

first skill in learning a language. Before we learn how to speak,

we learn how to hear. Language learners with good listening skills

can successfully engage in a conversation and learn to speak, read

and write by listening to others (Hong, 2016). A successful

conversation must have a good listener and a good speaker (Leong

2.3 Methods to Improve the Four English Skills.

To develop and improve the four English skills, students and

teachers need to play their role in ensuring the mastery of English

can be done. Reading skill can be developed by students if they

work hard to learn English and teachers must give full support to

them (Nur & Ahmad, 2017). As stated by Teevno and Raisani

(2017), reading is a basic skill to learn English because from

reading students can enrich their vocabulary and will have better

understanding when reading English materials (Sadiku,

2015). Interest in reading English materials should be inculcated

from not only home but also school. In Muhammadiyah

Yogyakarta, the teachers used the translation method to

encourage the students to read English (Ismail et. al, 2017). This

will help the students to understand the English materials better

and eventually increase the students’ passion in reading who find

English as a foreign language and hard to be learnt. Even though

students have notes in hardcopy form, they also need an

explanation from lecturers or teachers to enhance their

understanding in the subject (Picard & Velautham, 2016).

Ahmadi, 2017). Listening ability is essential for students to

understand the lectures in class. Eighty percent of gaining

knowledge in university is delivered by lectures. A student learns

better when he can listen better (Sadiku, 2015). Thus, students

with good listening skills are easy to associate with Western

students because Westerners have different English accents.

Finally, speaking is also an important skill to deliver a

message to people (Sadiku, 2015). Language learners normally

find conversing in English as a daunting process despite the fact

that with good speaking skills, someone will be able to socialise

better and communicate effectively with other people. Having

good proficiency in English speaking will help students to voice

Journal of Environmental Treatment Techniques

2021, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages: 37-43

Therefore, the role of facilitators in learning cannot be ignored.

Apart from that, some universities in Malaysia have visiting

lecturers from western countries and students should take this

opportunity to hear any academic talks and sharing sessions

which are conducted in English so that they become familiarised

with the language.

as principal components (PCs) in PCA and can be defined as a

linear combination of variables.

Let a data matrix,

X n p

(1)

Another way is to practice spontaneous speaking. It is the best

way to train students to become more efficient and confident to

talk in English because students are trained to talk in the most

natural and spontaneous way (Lumettu & Runtuwene, 2018).

Hence, teachers play an important role to encourage students to

speak English in class and develop their confidence to

communicate in front of the crowd (Leong & Ahmadi, 2017).

Where

is a number of observations and

is a number of

independent variables.

In PCA, the linear combination of variables for PCs is formulated

as,

t  x p  x p ... x p

(

i1,2,...,n

Method

.1 Study Design

This research utilised the quantitative study by collecting

p_mis a loading vector of unknown coefficients and t_iis a score

information among UniKL MIIT students for two semesters by

online survey. A total of 116 students were participated in the

survey. The survey link was broadcasted to third semester degree

students through random sampling technique. Random sampling

was used as it is the suitable technique to collect data since it is a

quick and easy method to give equal chance of anyone being

picked within one large target group. The programs that

participated in this study were Bachelor in Computer and

Entrepreneur Management (BCEM), Bachelor in Networking

System (BNS) and Bachelor in Software Engineering (BSE). The

average time taken to answer the questionnaire was 30 minutes.

vector of PCs. It can be written as

T  X P

(3)

and

on the first

is an orthogonal matrix. The number of

is chosen based

of eigenvector columns, where r m . The PCs are

uncorrelated and ordered according to the magnitude of the

eigenvalues. The first principal component, PC1 holds the largest

variance or contains as much information of dataset. The variance

decreases as the number of PCs increase. To choose the ample

number of PCs, they must have a cumulative variance explained

at least 80% of the total variance.

.2 Study Instrument

.2.1 Questionnaire

The instrument used was adapted from various studies which

The PCA technique can be summarized as follows:

incorporated the values of attitude, understanding and

performance of students towards the use of English. English

proficiency consists of four elements: Speaking, Writing, Reading

and Listening. The questionnaires done by (Atetwe, 2013; Latu,

a) First, we normalize the data set by using mean and standard

deviation to convert the dataset into the same scale.

x_iv_x

D_x

994; Marian et al., 2007; Yushau and Hafidz, 2015) were

u_i

(4)

adapted to suit the scope of this study. There were two sections in

the questionnaire: the first section is seeking for students’

demographic background where closed-ended questions were

asked. The second section consists of questions regarding

students’ attitude, performance and understanding towards the

use of English as well as their score on the four main skills:

Speaking, Writing, Reading and Listening. For the purpose of the

participants to understand the items better, some amendment,

enhancement and improvement have been made for several

phrases and sentence construction of the questionnaire. Likert

Scale items were used for the rating from 1 to 5 with 1 for totally

disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for neutral, 4 for agree and 5 for totally

agree.

Where ^vx is a mean of

and ^Dx is a standard deviation

b) Then, calculate the covariance matrix of standardized data

set in step (a). This covariance matrix measures the

correlation among the independent variables. Given the

formula as below,





(u u) (u u)



(5)

n 1

.2.2 Data analysis: Principal Component Analysis

Principal Component Analysis is a powerful mathematical

It is crucial to identify correlation variables because they

comprehend noise and redundant information.

procedure in multivariate analysis. The main purpose of the PCA

technique is to reduce the dimensionality of a correlated and high

dimensional dataset (Shlens, 2005). In this procedure, it reduces

and transforms a larger number of explanatory variables dataset

to a smaller of factors or latent variables of PCA that can be

visualized graphically, with minimal loss of information (Li, Liu,

Peng, & Sun, 2016). These orthogonal latent variables are known

c) Calculate the eigenvalues based on the covariance matrix

in (b). Then, determine the eigenvector corresponding to

the eigenvalues.



U  I



0

(6)

Journal of Environmental Treatment Techniques

2021, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages: 37-43



is an eigenvector corresponding to the eigenvalue,



In our study, 4 elements were measured to determine the level

of English proficiency among the UniKL students. There are

Speaking, Writing, Reading, and Listening skills. The PCA

method has been used to reduce the dimensionality of a dataset

and making easier to visualize the issue in English proficiency

among the students.

. The magnitude of eigenvalues is equivalence to the

score variance and the eigenvectors signify the directions

of PCs.

d) Then, the eigenvectors are sort according to their

eigenvalues in decreasing order.

Table 2: Basic info of the four main skills

Main Skill

Reading

Writing

Mean

2.78

2.60

2.90

2.75

Min

Max

₁



₂







1.38

1.00

1.14

1.22

(

Speaking

Listening



 _p

Table 3: The correlation matrix among the selected criteria

e) The first

of eigenvectors will be chosen and that will

Speaking

0.667

0.634

0.646

Writing

0.667

0.590

0.595

Reading

0.634

0.590

Listening

0.646

0.595

0.697

form a new k dimensions of the matrix. The first PC will

capture the most information of the dataset because it has

the highest magnitude of the eigenvalue as it holds a lot of

information about the data and any changes along that

vector will give large variations. PCs with small

eigenvalues have low variance and thus our data does not

give significantly different when there are changes along

the vector.

Speaking

Writing

Reading

listening

0.697

Table 3 shows that there are correlations among all the

elements, and it proves that those elements are the important

criteria in measuring the students’ English proficiency. Students

who have good Writing skill will be good in Speaking skill and

vice versa. Writing skill is essential for students to write good

research thesis, prepare lab reports and score in English subject.

Speaking skill is very much needed for UniKL students to present

their final year presentation (FYP), interacting in class with

lecturers and international students. The ability of English-

speaking skill is commonly being a benchmark for students to be

more confident for their future career preparation. Listening skill

is the second-highest correlation to Speaking skill. Students must

be able to listen and understand English well for them to catch-up

the lesson in class since all the lectures in UniKL MIIT will be

held in English. If they cannot understand the language well, they

will miss what they are learning in class. Reading skill also shows

a positive correlation with all the elements. Reading skill is

crucial to be mastered by UniKL MIIT students so that they can

read and understand the academic textbooks while learning

English terms and eventually enhancing their English vocabulary.

Thus, reading is a basic skill that students must possess to become

proficient in writing, listening and speaking skills.

f) Transform the original n-dimensional data points into k

dimensions onto the PCA subspace.

^T^^X^Pk

(8)

Result and Discussion

Descriptive statistics were performed to explore the

characteristics of the sample. As can be seen from Table 1, the

distribution of the sample by gender found that 58.6 percent of the

students were males and 41.4 percent were females. Most of the

respondents come from the city (83.6%) compared to the village

which is 16.4 percent. The SPM (Malaysia Education Certificate)

result for English subject demonstrates that approximately half of

the respondents scored grade B, 34.5 percent scored grade A and

4.7 percent scored grade C and below. Table 2 shows the mean,

standard deviation, minimum and maximum values for the four

main skills of English proficiency. There is not much variation of

the mean values among the four main skills with Speaking shows

the highest score of 2.90 with standard deviation of 1.14. The

lowest mean score is Writing with 2.60 and standard deviation of

Table 4: The Importance of Components

.00. The range score for all the main skills are from 1 to 5.

PC1

PC2

PC3

PC4

Eigenvalue

Variance.

Percent

Cumulative.

Variance.

Percent

1.7074

0.6770

0.5698

0.5492

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the respondents

Variable

Number (n)

Percentage (%)

58.6

0.7288

0.1146

0.0812

0.0754

Male

0.7288

0.8434

0.9246

1.0000

Female

41.4

City

83.6

Village

16.4

PCA method was conducted to avoid multicollinearity in the

dataset because there was a redundancy among the variables. The

eigenvalues in Table 4 represent the calculation of the amount of

variation held by each principal component. These eigenvalues

are decreasing subsequently. The sum of all the eigenvalues gives

a total variance of 3.5034. The second row for Table 4 represents

SPM English (A)

SPM English (B)

34.5

50.9

14.7

SPM English (C and below) 17

Journal of Environmental Treatment Techniques

2021, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages: 37-43

the proportion of variation explained by each PC. We can describe

that for PC1, there is 73 percent holds the information of the

original data and PC2 contains 11.46 percent of the variation. In

the analysis, the first two PCs were only used with the cumulative

variance percent of 84.34 and this percentage is large enough to

explain the whole dataset.

English for the exam purpose (Nishanthi, 2018) and they study

English just to satisfy the university requirement as English is a

compulsory subject (Jasima et al., 2017). Fewer students engage

in English conversations between themselves, and this leads them

to have a low level of speaking skills. In fact, 90% of the UniKL

MIIT students are Malay. They prefer to use their native language

rather than speaking English among themselves (Wahid & Pilus,

2017). Some students were faced with difficulties in

understanding the questions from the lecture and this eventually

make them become confused and misinterpret the lesson. Most of

them have endured frustration, humiliation, shyness, and lack of

confidence in the classroom. These factors hinder the mastery of

the students’ English language skills.

Figure 1: Scree plot (Y-axis = variance; X-axis = number of PCs)

Generally, a larger variance percent means a better variable.

Eighty percent is considered as the number of the percentage

which describes the data well (Wold et. al, 2002). It is shown in

the Scree plot in Figure 1 that variance for PC3 and PC4 are

relatively small. PC3 and PC4 can be just ignored because their

percentage of variance is small and almost the same. Thus, they

will give the same information as PC1 and PC2 do. In this manner,

the number of variables was decreased from 4 to only 2 variables.

Figure 2: Individuals-PCA Biplot

Table 5: Rotation

PC1

PC2

PC3

PC4

Speaking

Writing

Reading

listening

0.5061

0.4876

0.5014

0.5047

- 0.3079

-0.6679

0.5006

0.4567

-0.7805

0.5513

0.2920

-0.0401

0.1997

-0.1108

0.6424

-0.7315

As can be seen in Table 5, Principal Components are the

linear combinations for each of the variables. For the first loading

vector places approximately equal weight on Speaking, Reading

and Listening skills and less weight on Writing skill. PC1 has

much information for Speaking, Reading and Listening skills.

The second loading vector places the highest weight on Writing

skill and less weight on the other 3 features. Hence, PC2 has more

information on Writing skill. The real situation for English

language proficiency among UniKL students can be observed

based on Figure 2 and Figure 3. Most of the individual data are

far away from the skill projections and some are scattered around

the origin. It can be explained that most of UniKL students do not

have good skills in reading, listening, speaking and writing. Only

a few of them can read and listen to English well, and only a few

of them can speak English well. Many students have incorrect use

of English grammar and inappropriate use of sentence structures

during a conversation. This is because most of the students learn

Figure 3:.PCA Biplot

PC2 describes the skill of Writing among UniKL students.

Very few students could write English well. This skill was

evaluated based on how the students constructed good sentences,

used correct usage of grammar, expressed ideas in writing and

based on the previous English semester result. Most of the

students did not focus their attention on the ability to write at the

school level and this weakness is brought by them to the

university level. As a result, it can be seen from the result of their

English in SPM (Malaysia Education Certificate). Only few of

Journal of Environmental Treatment Techniques

2021, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages: 37-43

them scored A on their English paper for SPM Exam. This is

relevant to the correlation score as presented in Table 3. Students

with good Writing, Listening and Reading skills will be able to

speak well.

International Journal of Instruction, 6(2). Retrieved from www.e-

iji.net

Jasima, F., Ashikin, N., & Syaimazar. (2017). English Language

Proficiency Among Technical Students of Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi

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Latu, M. F. (1994). Factors affecting the learning of English as a

second language macroskills among Tongan secondary

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Conclusions

The results of this study indicate that the students who have

been introduced to English language in UniKL MIIT demonstrate

different level of understanding among the four main skills which

are Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. The correlation

test suggests that the four main skills are highly correlated

between each other. The high correlation between the main skills

may lead to multicollinearity; hence, Principal Component

Analysis (PCA) is used to further investigate with the aim of

focusing on the most significant skills. The results revealed that

the students have a moderate level in English proficiency based

on the four main skills with the lowest capability possesses among

students is the Writing skill. Despite the contribution to the field

of English Language proficiency, some limitations of this study

need to be recognized in interpreting the results. The respondents

come from similar field of study and the number of respondents

is also quite low compared to the population of the

whole UniKL MIIT; consequently, the conclusion drawn from

this study is limited by the nature of the particular sample used,

which comprises merely on technical students in UniKL MIIT.

Future research should consider these and other related issues

concerning English proficiency as to deliver empirical evidence

of its effectiveness over the four main skills.

Research

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Acknowledgement

Development,

Volume-3(Issue-1),

871–874.

The authors would like to thank the members of the Applied

Statistics and Data Sciences Cluster (ASADS) for their comments

and suggestions throughout the study. Special thanks to Universiti

Kuala Lumpur for funding the conference fees.

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Nur, A. H., & Ahmad, D. (2017). Improving Students’ Reading Skill

Through Interactive Approach At the First Grade of Sman 1 Mare,

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Competing interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that

would prejudice the impartiality of this scientific work.

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