Findings about students with great discrepancy at a web-based English remedial program

As the population of the younger generation keeps on decreasing rapidly in the recent years, many universities and colleges in Japan have to accept students with lower academic qualifications to meet the annual quotas. This has made higher education more accessible to high school graduates and as a result, students with great discrepancies in scholastic abilities are becoming involved in higher education. The significant gap in students' academic abilities between the upper and lower levels is considered to be the major factor impeding the implementation of effective teaching for the higher education curriculum. Therefore, various remedial education projects are being set up throughout the country to help students compensate for knowledge students should have mastered during their high school study. This paper reports on an English remedial course carried out at Nishinippon Institute of Technology, Japan. It explains some of the findings by analyzing the data using a contingent multiple regression method and highlights some very important factors which exert crucial influence on the educational effectiveness of English remedial courses.