| With the globalization and development of postgraduate education in China,international academic exchanges have become more and more frequent for science and engineering major postgraduates.Therefore,their English academic writing level has a direct influence on the effectiveness of academic exchanges and the dissemination of research results.However,in the traditional English education,researches on English academic writing for science and engineering major postgraduate students have been neglected for decades.So the research on needs analysis of science and engineering major postgraduates’ English academic writing is still limited.Taking this point into consideration,the present study attempts to explore the learning needs of science and engineering major postgraduates in their English academic writing through empirical research methods with three questions by ways of questionnaire and semi-structured interview.The questionnaire is based on the previous research findings,which includes Hutchinson & Waters’ s(1987)theoretical model of learning needs and Paltridge et al.’s(2009)academic writing teaching research.The author also makes some adjustments to the questionnaire in order to make it suitable for the current research purpose.186 students have completed the questionnaire and help to answer the first question about evaluation on their English academic proficiency and the teaching of English academic writing.Besides,based on a Four-point Likert questionnaire,another question is explored in details to identify students’ learning needs in five categories,namely,academic writing purposes,language needs,rhetoric needs,academic literacies and discipline knowledge needs,and writing resources needs.The third question is discussed to explore whether and how the English level influences the learning needs of science and engineering major postgraduates in English academic writing.Meanwhile,a semi-structured interview is also conducted among 8 students aiming to find out the hidden reasons for the different needs of the five aspects.The findings show that in the first,more than half of the science and engineering major postgraduates realize the importance of English academic writing course,but they feel dissatisfied with their English academic writing level.Secondly,postgraduates of science and engineering major have different degrees of requirements in five aspects of English academic writing needs.Thirdly,the English level has not much significant influence on the English academic writing needs.By exploring the reasons of the needs differences,it is shown that professional teachings and instructions in the writing process need to be emphasized.Having not enough time and weak motivation to practice writing as well as the lack of academic literacies all lead to the limitation of their academic writing competence development.The above findings not only enrich the research scope of academic English writing,but also provide some enlightenment for English academic writing teaching.What’s more,the limitations and suggestions for further research have been mentioned at the end of the study. |
