A Brief Analysis of The College English Teaching in Privately Owned Colleges For Postgraduates Upon The Demand Analysis

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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 123

2nd International Conference on Education, Sports, Arts and Management Engineering (ICESAME 2017)

A Brief Analysis of the College English Teaching in Privately Owned

Colleges for Postgraduates upon the Demand Analysis

Shanshan Jia

City College of Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Whuhan, Hubei, P.R.C 430000

Key words: the postgraduate cultivation (PC) in POCs and ICs; experimental teaching; demand
analysis

Abstract: In the year 2011, China Administration issued The Cultivation Program of Talents of
Special Requirements in which 5 privately owned colleges and universities are approved to recruit
postgraduates. Since then, many independent colleges (ICs) and privately owned colleges (POCs)
began to apply for the authority of postgraduate recruitment due to its importance in cultivating
advanced applied technique oriented talent professionals (ATOP) which is of great significance for
the development of POCs in its futher establishment of fist educational products. Although the
appliance of postgraduate recruitment means more opportunities for the development of POCs and
ICs, it confronts those institutes of higher education with more problems worth wide attention.
Therefore, the current situations including challenges and opportunities for ICs and POCs in their
advanced ATOP cultivation were elaborated in this paper, based upon which the significance and
demands of College English Teaching (CET) for postgraduates in POCs and ICs were analyzed in
detail. Further, the current CET in A College taken as the case, an experimental teaching procedure
was designed for the cultivation of professional masters. Supported by the results of contrastive
testing between experimental group and control group and the data collected from the questionnaire
during the experimental teaching , the experimental teaching should be verified in the hope that it
may provide reference for the operation of postgraduate education in ICs and POCs, so as to pave
the way for their establishment of educational brand in cultivating advanced ATOP.

The Analysis of Postgraduate Educational Quality in ICs and POCs


In the year 2011, China Administration issued The Cultivation Program of Talents of Special
Requirements in which determined the rights and status of advanced talents cultivation for ICs and
POCs. Since then, a large number of ICs and POCs has begun to apply for the recruitment of
professional postgraduates according to their own disciplinary advantages and the local economic
features where the campus is located. Thus, the scale of postgraduate education has been on a
booming, which contributes much to the cultivation of advanced professional talents in China.
The current status of postgraduate cultivation in ICs nd POCs
Since 2011, ICs and POCs which are approved to recruit professional postgraduate students have
spared no effort in directing their connotative development. The subject range permitted to recruit
postgraduate students as well as the scale of recruitment are on a drastic booming, which has much
to do with the great importance attached to the development of postgraduate education in colleges
and universities. The current situation accords with the following trends:
A. The number of authorized centers for professional graduates students cultivation is increasing.
In 2011, the first 5 POCs approved to have PC have only one authorized center for professional
master's degree whereas up to 2015, the above 5 colleges have altogether 18 centers.
B. The recruitment scale of professional postgraduate students in ICs and POCs is on a booming.
According to the report from China Administration of Education, the recruitment scale in Beijing
Copyright © 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 289
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 123

City University in 2015 was 280, that in Xijing University is 60, 100 in Jilin HuaQiao University of
Foreign Languages, and 60 in Hebei Institute of Communications.
C. The number of candidates for postgraduate education has been on an increase. Since the
establishment of PC in ICs and POCs, due to the limit of specialization recognition of candidates
for ICs and POCs, the candidates recruited comes at a large extent from adjustment, which is a
booming for the scale but a negative impact on the quality of recruitment. However, with the time
passing, the PC in ICs and POCs has been gradually accepted by candidates inside China. This is
reflected in the net recruitment in some regional ICs and POCs such as Beijing City University and
Xijing University in 2015, both of which didn't accept adjusted candidates and the recruitment in
some colleges was very competitive, 19.7:1, which is over 7 times more than that of the national
average, 2.7:1.
1.2 The bottleneck for the PC in ICs nd POCs
Although the scale and number of authorized centers for professional PC and recruitment is on a
booming thanks to the administrative support from the government and investors of ICs and POCs,
lots of problems are still left unsolved which have become the bottleneck for the development of PC
in ICs and POCs.
A. The source of students: Although with the development of PC in ICs and POCs, various
preferential policies aiming at attracting candidates have come into being, ICs and POCs are
difficult to be accepted by the general candidates in China. For instance, before 2015, East
University of Heilongjiang, Ji lin Hua Qiao University, and Hebei Institute of Communication took
pains to satisfy their recruitment via adjustment. Before 2014, Xijing University also had the same
difficulty. The source of recruitment concerns much about the survival and development of ICs
and POCs. The property of severe shortage of candidates is actually the low recognition in China
among the candidates. However, seen from the development of Beijing City University and
Xijing University, the geological advantages and assistance and aid policies are conductive to the
attraction of candidates,, which is in the short term a relieving strategy, but not sustainable for the
development of advanced higher education catering in ICs and POCs. Therefore, it is urgent that a
brandish educational programme for the establishment of distinguished reputation for those ICs and
POCs in PC shall be of great significance, for their sustainable development.
B. The instability of candidates For the preparation of the study in this paper, in the hope of
investigating the current statues of candidates in ICs and POCs, 60 postgraduate students from A
College were interviewed, with the data collected in the table below:
Table 1. The questionnaire for the satisfaction of students in A College
The motivation Willing/Unwilling Degree of recognition

Adjustment Knowledge Just to unwilling willing accepted unaccepted not sure


pursuing get a
diploma
45 12 58 48 12 5 48 7
Seen from the above data collected, The candidates in College A are largely adjusted, most of
whom are unwilling to register. Therefore, the resource of recruitment is instable. Besides, lots of
candidates are supposed to be cultivated in a theoretical way, not professionally, which is their
current direction. The graduate students naturally would underestimate their academic scheme due
to the mood of disappointment. That is to say, the graduate student cultivation approved in ICs and
POCs are foremost the professional ones, instead of theoretical, which betrays the original
intention of those candidates and will naturally lead to the instability of those candidates.
C. The supervisors have no practical experience The cultivation goal of professional graduate

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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 123

students is to equip them with sturdy theoretical basis and certain practical skills, techniques and
working experience so as to make them the advanced talents for professional fields. To be brief,
those who are cultivated to be the professional graduates are supposed to be qualified with practical
working positions where large amounts of working experience and certain theoretical knowledges
are required. Currently, seen from the distribution of supervisors in ICs and POCs inside China,
most of the supervisors are of theoretical teaching faculties due to their education background.
Namely, because most of supervisors are graduated from the state-owned universities and colleges,
they are adept at writing research thesis but fairly weak at directing their graduates to cope with the
reality during their working. This dilemma has now become a serious bottleneck for PC in ICs and
POCs.

The Current Situation of CET in ICs and POCs


1. The general status of CET in ICs and POCs. ICs and POCs are competitive supplement for
the higher education in China Since 2004, ICs and POCs have continued to appear in large numbers.
However, impacted by the society and influenced by the euducational operation goals, the
traditional educational modes in the state owned universities and colleges can not accomodates the
needs that regional colleges have which aims at serving the local and regional economic
development. Taking the CET for graduate students in ICs, the low efficiency and poor quality has
become the most serious problem. This has also aroused wide range of attention inside China.
2. Huang et al.(2012)advocated that the CET for professional graduate students should focus
on the pacticability and the application of English in the professional fields[1]. Shen (2013) further
pointed out that the professional graduate student cultivation is the essential need for the
development of ATOP cultivation. Therefore, all the courses for general purpose including English
should be differentiated with the ones conducted in the state owned colleges and universities[2]. Wu
(2013) elaborated on the solutions of PC for ICs and POCs, and discussed in detail the dilemma in
general courses teaching represented by English, holding that the reason why the teaching effect in
the English teaching for ICs and POCs is poor is due to the limitations from the traditional teaching
procedures, the quality of student resources, financial support and the purpose of maximazation of
benefit for the investors[3]. Therefore, the usual procedure adopted during teaching is usually the
traditional Prescription-Presentation-Practice method (PPP method) and Teaching in Big Class.
Wang (2014) analyzed the shortcomings of PC in ICs and POCs from the perspective of
supervisor selection, advocating that the reason thereof is the unqualification of teaching faculty's
knowledge framework towards the basic purpose of PC[4]. Cui et al. (2014) taking X College in
Heilongjiang Province as the case, emphasized the importance of CET in the PC process in ICs and
POCs and held that the cultivation of postgraduate students is absolutely necessary for the purpose
of serving the local economy. However, the teaching reformation for general courses is so
significant that it contributes much to the establishment of educational brands for ICs and POCs[5,
6]. Feng (2015) analyzed the educational quality of PC in the aforementioned 5 colleges and
universities in a quantitative way, advocating that most of the candidates and graduates are
unsatisfied with the current PC, among which , the most unsatisfying aspects lie in the
student-teacher ratio, and the fact that the teaching content in class for College English is disjointed
with the actural production needs[7]. He thought that only by downsizing the class in teaching and
rearrange the teaching contents in a hierarchical way from EGP to ESP can contribute to the career
development for those professional master candidates in the future.
Above all, the CET in ICs and POCs is filled with both challenges and opportunities, the
reformation of which could be conductive to the establishment of educational brand for ICs and

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POCs in China, represented by CET. If summarized, the CET in ICs and POCs are of the following
shortcomings:
The teaching content follows the traditional version in the public or state owned colleges and
universities, which goes against the school operation to serve the local economy and the features of
their students.
Since the purpose of running a college for most of the investors in China is to maximize the
benifit, the fund input in the hardware construction and the teaching force establishment is quite
limited, which restricts the development of PC.
Morever, the graduates in those ICs and POCs will handle professional and practical work in
their posts. Therefore, the teaching content should be arranged in a hierarchical way from English
for General Purpose (EGP) to English for Special Purpose (ESP).
To sum up, the CET for graduate students in ICs and POCs is not ideal, hence, reformation
needed urgently.
3. The demands of CET from the professional graduate students. In order to find out the real
demands of those students in having CET, 200 candidates from A College were interviewed, with
150 valid questionnaires collected, which is represented in detail as belows:

The Teaching Contents that Students Prefer


Students
55
43 40

12

Professional readings Daily talkiing and writing thesis vocational English


listening training

Fig.1 The Teaching Contents that Students Prefer


Seen from the above graph, some students (43) prefer to have reading practice in CET. They
hope to complete the recognition towards their work in the future. So via reading, they are inclined
to absorb new theoretical knowledge abroad.
Meanwhile, most of the interviewees think that the class scale should not exceed 30 people,
indicating that students are eager to have more chance to practice their linguistic abilities during
class. A large part of students hold that beside professional reading, the daily communication in
English is quite important. They think it important to practice their daily talking and listening. Also
some other students think it important to learn vocational English since it plays a significant role in
their future career development. only a few students (12) hold that EGP for thesis writing is
important since they will probably have further education as doctorial candidates.
Therefore, obviously, the CET in ICs and POCs should meet the needs for students' vocational
development, satisfy the needs of daily communication in their working, as advanced ATOPs.

The College English Teaching in Privately Owned Colleges for Postgraduates upon the
Demand Analysis
1.The establishment of experimental teaching. From the aforementioned, the establishment of a
teaching mode for those professional graduate students is of great significant. Thus, according to the
features of Net+ currently, an experimental teaching was designed in this paper. With Small Private
Online Courses (SPOC) the prototype, the mode is divided into online and offline modules. Online

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module was designed for information exchange after or before class, also a channel for the teacher
to collect information to adjust the teaching plan in time, whereas the offline part serves as the
feedback of the practice via presentation of student groups and assessment from teachers. In this
teaching mode, students were taught with ESP according to the teaching materials composed by the
teaching faculties in A College. The offline part was conducted in the form of seminar presentation.
The procedure is presented asblow:

Fig.2 The Experimental Teaching


According to the above figure, , the teacher will conduct the ESP teaching according to the
major characteristics. Firstly in the online part, the teacher will allot the prevision task to students in
groups (including the situational role playing and extensive readings). After that , students are
required to discuss the questions in groups, answer the questions alloted interactively, and complete
the role playing before class. At the meantime, students will find out the difficulties during their
preparation and feedback to the teacher, including those questions unable to fix. Then the teacher
will elaborate those difficulties in detail in the offline section.
In the offline part, the teacher will have students in groups to present the situational tasks
assigned beforehand and give correspondent assessment, which shall be taken down to be the
reference for the next turn of online discussion. The duration of the above experimental teaching
ranges from the second semester of grade one to the first semester of grade two. During the
experimental teaching, a mid-test and a final test will be held. The former is to test the basic
linguistic ability, whose difficulty coefficient is of CET-6 wheres the latter is taken in the forms of
acceptance rate of Y Company which has a long history of cooperation with A College. (The
same company for all the testees)
2.The selection of participants and evaluation criterions. In order to guarantee the objectiveness
and validity of the data collection, two classes from grade two were selected and tested, which is to
realot the classes to maintain them in the same distribution. Approved by the college, the
experimental teaching lasted for one year was conducted. Class one is of experimental group (EG),
taught with experimental procedures above, whereas Class two is of control group (CG), taught
with the traditional PPP procedures. Both classes are require to have the self-compiled materials on
campus The Engineering English After the pre-test, the two classes were re-alloted. The difficulty
coefficient for pre-test is CET-4. Another mid-test and final test were also cunducted during the
period of contrastive teaching, with the purposes aforementioned. Then the results were collected

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and analyzed to compare the differentiation of experimental and traditional teaching, so as to


determine the vadility of the experimental teaching mode towards the PC in ICs and POCs.

The Collection and Analysis of Data


1.The mid-test. After a whole semester of contrastive teaching, both of the classes were
required to take a mid-test whose difficulty coefficient is of CET-6, with the results displayed as
below: (Note: The satisfaction degree (SD) of students is the ratio between the ones agreed with the
teaching mode and the total of the class)
Table 2. The results of mid-test
Class Total Listening Reading Writing SD
Score(Avg.)
Class one 65.2/100 24.2/30 23.7/40 17.3/30 70%
Class two 70.6/100 18.4/30 32.8/40 19.4/30 33.3%
The results of mid-test is presented as above The result shows that, Class two is generally
superior to Class one which might be due to the experimental teaching. This is manifested as the
differentiation of average total score, (Class two is 5.4 higher than Class one). The reason is that,
due to the traditional teaching, students in Class one had a drastic improvement on their readings
skills (9.1 higher than Class two), but no big progress in listenning, which is totally contrasive for
Class two (5.8 higher than Class one). The two classes remains basically the same in writing ability.
(17.3/19.4) Furthermore, seen from the SD, the students in Class two show apparently more
satisfaction than that in Class one, which indidates the intention of the students in having CET.
2. The collection and analysis of Final test. After a whole year of contrastive teaching, the two
classes were confronted with jobhuntiing. At this time, the Y Electronics Company Ltd,. which has
a long history of cooperation with the collge was invited to recruit students. Here, the recuitment of
Class one and two were collected. The data was as below:
Table 3. The results of final test
Class
Assistant
Senior Engineer Engineer Secretary
Engineer
Students (foreign affairs) (foreign affairs) (foreign affairs)
(foreign affairs)
attending
Class one 26 12 7 4 3
Class two 15 3 3 6 1
Seen from the above data, the total attendings of Class one is 26, with 26 recruited and 100%
the recruitment rate, while the attendings of Class two is 15, with 13, the recruitment and 86.7% the
recruitment. For Class one, 12 were employed as senior engineers, 7 the engineers, 4 the assistant
engineers, and 3 secretaries. For Class two, the total attendings are of 11 less than Class one,
which indicates that the vocational confidence of Class one is much stronger generally than Class
two, and the differentiation of recruitment rate between two classes indicates that the
competitiveness of Class one is generally stronger than that of Class two. In the employment
structure, the rate of employment as engineering staffs is of 88.5%, while that in Class two is only
80%, which means the general knowlege framework of Class one is more scientific than that of
Class two. Therefore, seen from what has been elaborated above, the experimental teaching in this
study is more effective and easier for the professional graduate students in A college in comparison
with the traditional approaches, which could also be conductive to other POCs and ICs, due to the
focus on the training of students' practical linguistic capability and the combination of English as

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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 123

the media of information with the professional knowledge. Therefore, during the experimental
teaching, students are equipped with an enhanced vocational confidence and language capability.
Therefore, Class one was superior to Class two in the final test.

Conclusions
For the purpose of POCs and ICs in their postgraduate students cultivation, which is to serve
the local economy, so as to establish their own fist educational brand, those ICs and POCs should
set their courses according to the basic and actural needs of their students in the career development.
That is, the cultivation of advanced ATP. The settlement thereof could finally form the instinctive
educational features for those POCs and ICs, which could give them a sustainable development in
the competition of student resources. However, all these above rely much on the teaching reform of
general course represented by CET due to its fundamental properties. Meanwhile, the establishment
of the CET mode upon the students' demand is the respect towards the students' willing which shall
be also supported by them, so as to get its maximized teaching effort. In conclusion, represented by
CET, the teaching mode upon the students' need analysis is of great sigfinicance and necesity.

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[2] Shen Wenming, Wu Liling. The considerations for independent colleges to be authorized to
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[3] Wu Yanli. The Development for Independent Colleges [D]. Shandong Normal Univeersity,
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[4] Wang Xiujuan. The Challenges and opportunities confronting the supervisor selection
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[5] Cui Pengfei et al., How to cultivate professional graduate students , 2014(19):82-83.
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