92 / 2018-07-24 19:58:56

Integrating the Project-Based Approach into the Academic Communication Course for Non-English Major Doctoral Students

project-based; common core knowledge; discipline specific conventions; science and technology PhD students

全体主题 > ESP 教学方法

With more opportunities for young Chinese scholars to contact the outside world in the academic spheres today, they see the urgent need to improve their academic writing and communication skills. Many young scholars are eager to present their newest research at international academic conferences and publish original research in internationally recognized journals. Under such circumstances, English courses designed for doctoral students in China should meet their needs as young researchers. Students should be given the opportunities to use the language in the real context, to serve their academic purposes.
This paper is based on an empirical study conducted in the Academic Communication Course for non-English major doctoral students in Chongqing University. The course, lasting one semester with 60 course hours had two major components- Academic Paper Writing and English for International Academic Conferences. The 39 subjects of the study came from 3 broad subject areas: automobile engineering, aerospace engineering and power engineering. At the beginning of the course, a questionnaire and a self-rating sheet were administered to the students to get a general view about students’ learning needs. With the basic information collected and analyzed, a project-based teaching approach was adopted throughout the course. The final product of the project for each student was a subject related written academic paper and a final oral presentation at a simulated international conference. In the class, the teacher focused on the common core knowledge and assigned subject related tasks at each stage of the project. Students then worked in small groups and sometimes individually to accomplish their tasks. Their achievements at each stage of the project were presented in the classroom so that they could receive timely feedback from the teacher and the other students. At the end of the course, they were asked complete the pre-lesson self-rating sheet again to see if there was obvious progress. Besides a questionnaire was administered to collect information about students’ perception about the effectiveness of the project-based approach. This was followed by an interview, in which students shared their views about the advantages of this approach and problems needed to be addressed in the future. Data collected from the self-rating sheet, the questionnaire and the interview were analyzed and the results are discussed in detail. This paper will provide new insights into the classroom pedagogy adopted in Academic English courses for non-English major doctoral students in the Chinese context.