The joint-medicine programme between Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand and the University of Nottingham, UK has been operated for more than ten years. Each year, the programme accepts twelve students from both Thai and international schools. Successful applicants with the IELTS score at least the overall of 7.0 have to spend their first six months studying various subjects including Social sciences, Human Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics, in English; this course is called the preparatory course. In this study, our focus was on the Human Biology subject composed of 29 topics such as human anatomy, cardiovascular system, respiratory system etc. We, therefore, investigated the correlation between the students’ IELTS scores and the passing rate of these 29 topics.

Data were collected from three batches of first year medical students enrolled in the preparatory course between 2011 and 2013. These were 11, 12 and 12 students entries in year 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively. From 35 students, there were 9 students with the IELTS score of 7.0, 12 students with the IELTS score of 7.5, and 9 students with the IELTS score of 8.0 and 1 student with the IELTS score of 8.5. In addition, these students had to complete all topics in Human Biology and in order to pass; they must reach at least 60% of the total mark for each topic.  Therefore, in this study, We divided students into four groups according to the number of topics that they fail: 1) students who fail between 0 and 5 topics, 2) students who fail between 6 and 10 topics, 3) students who fail between 11 and 15 topics and 4) students who fail between 16 and 20 topics.

There are 5, 7, 5 and 1 students with IELTS score of 7, 7.5, 8 and 8.5 fail 0-5 topics. Three students with IELTS score of 7, 7.5 and 8 fail 6-10 topics. One student with IELTS score of 7 and 8 fail 11 - 15 topics. Two students with IELTS score of 7.5 fail 16 - 20 topics.