| English as a basic course plays an important role in the graduate education and the periodicals and research achievements of various disciplines in academic field are largely published in English.However,research shows there are problems in Master and PhD students' ability of English for academic purposes(hereafter called EAP): Students fail to follow native English teachers,and cannot catch their key points;the academic vocabulary is not sufficient;they don't know much about how to reasonably quote literature resources and avoid academic plagiarism.Therefore,in recent years,Cai Jigang,as an advocate of EAP teaching,calls for focus on teaching of EAP instead of general College English in universities of China.Shandong Normal University also decided to offer EAP course for the non-English-major graduates to foster their EAP ability in September 2016.As for the relevant studies,the domestic and abroad studies are mainly about single skill of EAP.What's more,the participants in previous studies are just undergraduates or graduate students.This thesis is aimed to investigate the overall EAP needs of graduate students and compare them in different groups.In view of this,this study is intended to explore the situation of the non-English-major graduates' EAP needs in Shandong Normal University so as to provide implications for the curriculum designing and teaching of EAP.The quantitative and qualitative method are adopted in this study and 118 non-English-major Master students and 74 PhD students from Shandong Normal University are involved.Two questionnaires are applied which are adapted according to the questionnaires made by Hu Zhiqing and He Jiabao and the pilot study was carried out to test reliability and validity of the two questionnaires.The data of questionnaires is analyzed by SPSS22.0.In order to have a deeper understanding of the research results,8 Master students and 8 PhD students are selected to be interviewed after class.The present study mainly investigates and explores the following three questions:(1)What are the EAP needs of Master students and PhD students? Are there any differences in EAP needs between the two groups?(2)Are there any differences in EAP needs between Arts and Science graduate students?(3)Are the EAP needs of the non-English-major graduate students satisfied in one semester?The main findings are as follows:Master and PhD students have disagreements on the key teaching points,learning motivation and teaching mode.Master students want to mainly learn academic vocabulary,while PhD students prefer learning academic writing.However,PhD students are more interested in EAP courses and prefer the combination of online and offline teaching mode.Arts Master students hope to mainly learn to grasp the skills in reading the original English papers and prefer the teaching mode of learner-centered and teacher-guided as well as online and offline mode.Science Master students desire to acquire the knowledge of the combination of listening,speaking,reading,writing and vocabulary.In addition,they are more satisfied with EAP course,but not very interested in the combination of online and offline teaching mode.However,Arts PhD students regard EAP writing as the teaching focus and their satisfaction of EAP curriculum is higher,but Science students' interest in EAP is higher.After a semester's EAP learning,the Mater students' needs for learning materials have been satisfied well,and their reading and academic writing abilities also have been greatly improved.Nevertheless,needs towards listening,oral English and academic writing rules have not been well satisfied.The EAP needs of PhD students have been satisfied in all aspects.Based on the findings,pedagogical implications are provided for the improvement of curriculum designing and teaching of EAP.In the end,the limitations of the present study are presented and suggestions for further study are proposed. |
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