This paper highlights the causes of incompetence amongst the higher education English language teachers in Pakistan to assess the skill-based language competency of non-native English language students. It elaborates the needs for training the faculty members teaching English courses to learn how they can enhance the real potential of their English language students with focus on listening comprehension, speaking, reading comprehension, writing and grammatical structures rather than only a written recall-test of three hours. This test of recall does not improve higher education English language students’ required skills for real life competency in professional context. Neither does the written recall-test help build confidence in professional presentations while they are engaged in their active learning mode at the universities. The concern to augment the skills of higher education English language students was raised through a sample of n = 227 higher education students who failed to prove their skills significantly in conventional test of English language at the undergraduate programme of studies. The study concludes that a conventional three-hour English testing practice is too insufficient to build the language-bound skills-based confidence and required performance in professional context.