Influence of English language proficiency on tertiary level education

English is an international language, which is essential for interpersonal communication across the world. It is considered to be a common language in the field of education, business, trade, and commerce. It is found from the research studies that imparting proficiency in the English language should begin right from the school level education. Thus, the present study was carried out to assess the influence of English language proficiency on tertiary-level education in a target undergraduate student population (second year in biological sciences) at the Faculty of Science, Eastern University, Sri Lanka. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Collected data were analyzed by Excel software (Windows 10.0) to assess the significant influence of English language proficiency in tertiary education. In the current study, the sex ratio (male and female) was nearly 2:1 (63% and 37%) respectively. The national school students showed a more successful rate for university entrance than provincial school. Further, the highest frequent usage of English than their mother tongue was noticed among university teachers (84%) when compared with school teachers (40%). Furthermore, the analysis showed that the majority of the students are using the English language in the university (87%), then school (40%). Most of the students were highly engaged in writing (94%), listening (83%), and reading rather than speaking skills (53%). Usage of the English language was higher (100%) in university education than in schools. Hence, the pass rate of English language proficiency was high at the tertiary level than the secondary level. Thus, this study recommends that school teachers should frequently use English in order to communicate with students while teaching.