Research On Curriculum Development Of Advanced Courses Of College English Based On Students’ Needs Analysis

Nowadays, college English is faced with unprecedented opportunities andchallenges. In2007, the Ministry of Education issued College English CurriculumRequirements, which is intended to provide requirements for the nation-wide reform ofthe traditional College English teaching and curriculum development. However, theconstruction of college English courses should always take learners’ needs intoconsideration.The study has investigated advanced courses of college English in HUST based onstudents’ needs. Questionnaire and interview were adopted to investigate500non-English majors from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and discussstudents’ actual learning needs and their attitudes to the current curriculum development.The questionnaire was designed based on Dudley-Evans and St John’s needs analysismodel and adopted part of the items from Wang Fangmin(2010)’s questionnaire for ESPcourses. SPSS.17.0was applied to make a descriptive analysis of results. In order to getmore information, telephone interviews were made to investigate15subjects.Results from the study mainly show the following two aspects, i.e. the students’needs for and basic views on the advanced college English courses. Firstly, students’most desirable skills are listening and speaking skills, therefore, the language skillscourses, such as Intermediate English Listening and Speaking Course is the most popularcourse among students; students prefer lively and vivid teaching methods like discussionin small group and adoption of multi-media to develop their comprehensive applicationability in English language; they need a practical and interesting teaching materials;students consider the usual performances combined with final exams as their propercourse assessment. Secondly, the current college English curriculum can basically satisfystudents’learning needs, however, since the new teaching mode have just conducted for alimited period. The effect still needs to be further gone into. The current study providessome references for college English teaching reform especially for the curriculumdevelopment of advanced courses.