Abstract:

The language courses represent an important part of the education of the future economists and managers at the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra. During study at the university students can extend their opportunities to participate in the mobilities abroad and achieve the appropriate job positions after graduation by the acquisition of the key language competences. In our paper we focus the attention on the knowledge evaluation of the study subject English language C, which is compulsory in the bachelor study programs at the Faculty of Economics and Management. This course is a part of the preparation for the level B2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. During the academic year 2019/2020 we carried out the pedagogical research focused on the evaluation the students´ attainments in English via the selected kinds of tasks in tests.
The main objective of the paper is the analysis of English language competences of the students, whereas we concentrated on the tasks from the English grammar, vocabulary and reading. The research sample consisted of the students of the Faculty of Economics and Management. The tasks were included in the exam tests that became the data base for the evaluation of the level of acquired language competences. Data analysis was performed via non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test to verify the statistical significance of the differences in the point evaluation of the particular task types. The results of hypothesis testing confirmed the significance of differences between the pair of tasks in Grammar and Reading, as well as between the pair of tasks in Vocabulary and Reading. The analysed tasks were ranked according to the average number of points and the best results were achieved in the task Reading, the next one was Vocabulary and the last position was taken by the Grammar task.
The communication competences in foreign languages play an important role in the teaching/learning process in the era of globalization and internationalization in education. The acquired research results will serve as a basis for the changes in teaching process, so that the students could improve their language attainments in the problematic topics, which will lead to the increased quality of the tertiary language education of the specialists for the practice.

Keywords:

English language, university education, language competence evaluation, hypothesis testing.