In this modem time, education is getting more and more important. Nobody can survive to live in the
global environ..rnent without enough education. The roles of education these days are inevitable because
of the demand of job fields, competition in workplace and the ability to adapt with theenvironment.
Education can be divided into two big areas which art' formal education and non-formal education. Both
types of education can provide people with adequate skills to compete in many aspects of their lives.
English course is an adjunct non-formal education for high school students. The purpose of this study is
to elaborate the roles of English courses upon first year university students' English capabilities. Fifty
first year university students who had had taken English courses during their secondary educational
years and 50 additional first year students who had not taken the courses were selected to participate in
the study. All of them had passed a quite hard enrollment to be accepted in the university, hence they all
could be regarded as higher-than-average students in their intelligence. They then had to undergo an
English test to measure their English performances in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. On the
average, students who had had taken English courses obtained better scores than their counterparts who
had not taken the courses, notably in listening and speaking, but in a lesser extent also in reading and
writing. It was concluded that English courses as an adjunct non-formal education in English were
advantageous for the students, mainly in the aspects of listening and speaking
