English Major Postgraduate Students' Conceptions Of Academic Research

Research competence building has become a prominent theme in higher institutions in China recently,as across the world.As one perspective of research competence study,investigations of different kinds of people's conceptions' of research have come into notice.Previous studies concentrated mainly on academics',students',supervisors',and English language teachers' views on academic research.Although an understanding of research is significant to the development of postgraduate education for improving the students' research engagement,systematic explorations in the specific field of English major students are lacking in the context of China.The present study aimed to examine the conceptions of research held by English major postgraduate students.Their research motivations and difficulties were also reported.Firstly,a questionnaire was administered to 70 English major masters from an institution in Yunnan province.SPSS 11.5 was used to collect and analyze the questionnaire responses.Then,12 of the subjects were invited again to the follow-up interview which was designed to further explore the research questions.The questionnaire responses supplemented by semi-structured interview data were analyzed and discussed together to carry out the research findings.The main findings of the present study showed that: first of all,most of the English major postgraduate students had comprehensive understandings of what research was and stressed the importance of being systematic and scientific.Their views on research were consistent with the conventional scientific notions of inquiry,which addressed the large sample size,objectivity,research results being published,and innovation.As for good quality research,the students thought highly on researchers' objectivity,large volume of information and hypothesis testing.Students also emphasized the need for research to offer ideas that they could use in daily life,which was a signal that the students had paid more attention and effort to the practicalapplication of research results.Their preference for practical value of research was mainly of disciplinary and personal reasons.In terms of the students' motivations towards conducting research,intrinsic and extrinsic motivations both played important roles.The postgraduate students had a strong personal development focus for doing research.It indicated that the students had realized their responsibility as being postgraduates and the importance of research for their development.Instrumental motivations of graduation and job hunting also had positive effects on students' research engagement.Also,there were interrelationships between the reasons of institutional requirements and job hunting.It also showed that the students' research behaviors were quite independent from research activities conducted by people of the same level.In the students' inner heart,research process was not that interesting and pleasant.With regard to difficulties and challenges in doing research,the students were confronting many of them.Overall,the mean scores in this scale of the questionnaire were quite high.The most widely recognized difficulties were a lack of professional guidance,routine interference,and limited research competence.These three difficulties were also interrelated to each other.The findings implied that the students were academically poor and not confident in their research competence,though they were quite positive about their research talent.In the light of the above findings,implications for Master of Arts education,their supervisors and the institution were tentatively suggested in the last part of the thesis.The limitations of the study and recommendations for future research were also presented in that part.