Hemispheric dominance and language proficiency levels in the four macro skills of Western Mindanao State university college students

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between the hemispheric dominance (HD) and the English proficiency (EP) scores in the four macro skills of the Western Mindanao State University college students. It hypothesized that students’ HD would have a significant correlation a) with their EP scores in listening, speaking, reading and writing, b) with their global EP score, c) with both the macro and global scores when respondents would be grouped according to age, gender and area of specialization. In this study, there were 240 respondents selected through purposive, stratified, and random sampling techniques from the 5,096 students of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Education. Using the standardized HD Test, the standardized Listening and Reading Comprehension Tests, the researcher-made Speaking and Writing Skill Tests and Cloze Test and employing mainly the Pearson r for the statistical analysis, the study concluded: 1) that most of the students of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Education of Western Mindanao State University were left-brained (74.6%); 2) that the students were “good” in speaking, “fair” in listening and writing skills but “ poor” in reading and in global English; 3) that there was no significant relationship between the students’ hemisphericity and their EP scores in listening, speaking, reading, writing and global proficiency tests; and 4) that a significant relationship was shown between HD and EP scores when respondents were grouped according to age and area of specialization only.