A Needs Analysis of English: Perceptions of Faulty and Doctoral Students

• Main Authors: Hsiu-Yu Yang, 楊秀榆
• Other Authors: Yu-Chih Sun
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/11638107870305986680

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 英語教學研究所 === 95 === As English has become the lingual franca for international communication, in order to pursue academic achievements, nonnative-speaking researchers are required to have adequate communication competence in English. In Taiwan, doctoral students’ deficiency in English has been widely considered as a serious problem, which might hinder their academic development. However, limited English courses or related resources have been provided for them. To bridge the gap, a well-conducted needs analysis should be necessary and helpful. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate doctoral students’ English needs in terms of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Needs here are defined as necessities, lacks, and wants, which have been conventionally referred as target needs or product-oriented needs. This study surveyed 148 doctoral students and 56 teachers in a research-oriented university in Taiwan, regarding: (1) importance of English, (2) contexts of English use, (3) evaluation of doctoral students’ English ability, (4) expectations of curriculum design, and (5) other help on English. The quantitative data of the questionnaires were analyzed through descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, and Chi-square analysis, while the qualitative data was examined by the author, and categorized into proper groups for further analysis. Results show that reading and writing skills were more important and more often used in doctoral study, while listening and speaking ability were in greater demand in students’ future career. In addition, due to doctoral students’ relatively poor performance in listening and speaking, more training on these two skills were highly suggested by the students. The issues of graduation requirement in English and lecturing content courses in English were also discussed. To conclude, findings of this study should help academic institutes design new or modify the existing English curriculum and learning resources for doctoral students.