Skills you would like to improve

◆If you were to take a course to improve your English skills, which of the following would be useful to you? Rate the importance of each.

Low

1. Listening to pronunciation / intonation / stress patterns of American English.

5% 11% 34% 27% 22% 3.50

2. Lecture notetaking. 4% 9% 32% 35% 21% 3.61

3. General listening comprehension. 1% 4% 18% 33% 43% 4.14

4. Giving formal speeches / presentations. 2% 9% 28% 30% 32% 3.80 5. Participating effectively in discussions. 1% 4% 18% 32% 45% 4.17 6. Communicating effectively with peers in

small group discussions, collaborative projects, or out-of-class study groups.

2% 8% 29% 34% 27% 3.75

12. Describing objects or procedures. 3% 9% 28% 39% 22% 3.68

13. Writing introductions and conclusions. 6% 14% 28% 34% 20% 3.48 14. Writing references and quotations. 7% 20% 44% 22% 7% 3.03

15. Formulating coherent arguments. 3% 12% 38% 32% 15% 3.42

16. Summarizing factual information. 3% 13% 35% 34% 15% 3.44

17. Synthesizing information form more than one source.

23. General reading comprehension 2% 4% 19% 35% 40% 4.06

First, Reading English received the highest average scores in terms of the frequency of use in college (2.91) and the importance to success in students’ study in college (3.98). The average score for Writing English ranked top (3.60) among the

four language skills when it came to students’ difficulties with each skill, and it was also considered the least important to success in students’ study in college (3.55) and after graduation (3.81). However, Listening and Speaking English got equally highest average scores (4.20) when students considered how important to success each skill might be in their field after graduation, but Speaking English was least often used in students’ study in college (2.40). In other words, for college students to study in school, English reading was considered the most often used while English writing the most difficult language skill. But for college students to succeed after graduation, English listening and speaking were considered more important than reading and writing. The SQ2 survey results seemed to well match the interview data with students’ possible future employers, students themselves, teachers and administrators, which will be discussed in the later sections.

Second, each of the four language skills was broken down into discrete items to gather more detailed information about students’ problems with each skill. For the listening skill, students’ biggest problems among others were understating “informal English” (3.69) and “lengthy descriptions in English” (3.55). For the speaking skill, a huge number of students indicated they have trouble “knowing how to say something in English” (4.0), but most of them did not seem to have problems with pronunciation (2.91). For the writing skill, which most of the students did not seem to have much experience of, “developing ideas” in writing (3.93) and their “overall writing ability”

(3.81) were problems that bothered them the most. As for the reading skill, reading

“entire reference or text books” (80.1%) and reading “selected chapters of books”

(67.3%) were the two commonest reading materials for college students, but students seemed to have more trouble reading “newspaper articles” (2.47) and “fictions” (2.46).

In addition to the types of reading materials expected to read in college, students also indicated that “understanding specialist vocabulary in a text” (3.69) appeared to be

difficult to them most of the time, followed by “reading in order to respond critically”

(3.58), “reading speed” (3.44) and “understanding a writer’s attitude and purpose”

(3.44).

In general, although English reading was considered the most frequently used language skill among college students, student participants read only “textbooks”

most often in college. However, such a limited genre seemed to have failed to provide students with a wide variety of reading experiences, which was reflected on students’

perceived difficulties with other reading genres, such as “newspaper articles” or

“fictions.” Moreover, reading English textbooks on specialized subjects did not seem to be entirely effortless to most student participants, even though they claimed reading

“entire reference or text books” and “selected chapters of books” were the two commonest reading materials for them in college. It seems that for most students,

“specialist vocabulary in a text” still ranked high in terms of students’ perceived difficulty with reading. Student participants’ two biggest problems with English listening, namely, “understanding informal English” and “understanding lengthy descriptions in English” were less trained and tested in regular English classes, as compared to formal and short conversations (based on the observation and interview data, which will be discussed in later sections). Furthermore, students rarely encountered the above two situations outside their English classes here in Taiwan.

Therefore, their problems with English listening seemed to suggest that classroom training should not only focus on formal and sentence-level listening comprehension, but also on informal and discourse-level listening comprehension. Student participants’ problems with English writing seemed to relate more to students’ writing ability than to their language problem itself. In other words, students had more problems “developing ideas” (3.93) than using “correct spelling” (3.15) and

“vocabulary” (3.48) or “structuring sentences” (3.50). Their “overall writing ability”

was what they were worried about very often. Perhaps such a writing problem originated from their limited source of English reading materials in college (i.e.

mostly textbooks), or their writing problems with their first language, which still needs more empirical evidence for any concrete conclusions. However, such a result revealed the fact that most English writing or other classes focused on only the students’ improvement of the language itself, but neglected the meta-cognitive kind of training, such as critical thinking and logical organization, etc. In terms of students’

speaking problem, most students indicated that they simply “did not know how to say something in English,” followed by other problems like “not knowing the best way to say something in English” (3.94) and “having trouble wording what you want to say quickly enough” (3.83). In other words, most students had very fundamental problems with speaking, which may be attributed to their lack of practice either in or outside English classes. Supposing students had been given ample opportunities to talk in English in the classroom or in their daily life situations, they should not have considered problems like “how to say something in English” as the problem that occurred to them most frequently. The SQ2 survey results suggest an overall pattern that students’ difficulties with English or their needs of English were not well taken care of in or even before college, which will be discussed in greater details in the following sections.

Third, SQ2 also elicited information about the specific English skills that students would like to improve, and the top four language skills on the list with an average score higher than 4.00 (on a five-point scale) appear to be “participating effectively in discussions” (4.17), “general listening comprehension” (4.14), “general reading comprehension” (4.06) and “knowledge of vocabulary” (4.03), which pretty much cover the four language skills except writing. Not surprisingly, speaking (“participating effectively in discussions”—4.17) and listening (“general listening

comprehension”—4.14) ranked the top two English skills that students would like to improve the most in college, followed by reading (“general reading comprehension”—4.06) and vocabulary (“knowledge of vocabulary” —4.03). Writing seemed to have received less attention than the other language skills among college students, suggesting that English writing was not generally required in Taiwan’s college education.

Generally speaking, student participants relied the most on English reading for their study in college. English writing, though considered to be the most difficult language skill for them, was not generally required in college. English listening and speaking, however, were regarded as the two most important skills to their success after graduation but did not seem to be sufficiently trained in college English classrooms.

In the following sections, students’ actual and perceived language needs in the future job market, as revealed by their possible future employers and other stakeholders, will become the interest of the present study and will be categorized and compared for further comparison with the EFL higher education and graduation benchmark requirement at both schools.