Research On General English Instructional Resources Construction And Instructional Model For Agricultural Graduate Students

To improve English proficiency for agricultural graduate students is a prerequisite for cultivation of international agricultural talents and the promotion of modern agriculture.Current instructional resources construction for general English course for agricultural graduate students lags behind in that it is not up-to-date and subject-related.The traditional instructional service still centers on teachers,classrooms and textbooks and overlooks students' needs in individuality and majors,which is not satisfactory in both content and manner.To tackle the above challenges,this dissertation,guided by Constructional learning theory and subject service theory,used questionnaires,interviews and foreign language placement test to probe into and then analyzed the status quo of information literacy and students' needs in the course of general English for agricultural graduate students.Results show that students are equipped with information awareness but lack in information competence,in that their objectives are too ideal,plans too abstract,monitor of the process missing and result evaluation not prompt.The objective state of students' needs is that their starting points are low and there is a big gap between different students.The expressed state of students needs is that they favor academic and applicable instructional content,and prefer interactive,multiple,multi-modal,digital and cyber instructional methods.From the trends emerged from the above survey,this dissertation aims at instructional resources and model construction for agricultural graduate students,and further conducts a case study with students from the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.This dissertation is innovative in that it proposed “an embedded instructional model based on instructional resources system construction”,which redresses the imbalance of methods over content in the previous models.The specific innovation is as follows:(1)It proposed a three-dimentional difficulty-discipline-skill top level frame for instructional resources construction for agricultural graduate students.Based on the survey of students' information literacy and instructional needs,and under the guidance of learning theory of Constructivism,it undertook the instructional resources construction for agricultural graduate students.Instructional resources construction is students' need oriented,aims to improve students' learning environment and to provide solutions to learning problems,and constructs sustainable instructional resources system.It proposed construction framework of graded,discipline-and-skill-specific instructional resources system,elaborated major construction manners including resource type determination,criteria and standards setting and instructional resources extraction.It forms instructional resources guarantee for instructional model.(2)It constructed the embedded instructional model for agricultural graduate students that is students-centered,teacher-directed and revolves around instructional resources employment,based on the above instructional resources system.It promotes students' information literacy and collaborative innovation,drives teachers' development and constructs novel teacher-students relationship.It is actively embedded in all the major stages of general English learning for agricultural graduate students,including needs analysis,objective setting,plan making,process monitoring and result evaluation.Through dynamic integration with students' learning and research,it offers related and specific instructional resources and teaching,with the role of learning content,activity management tool and students' activity support.(3)It applied and tested the instructional-resources-system-based embedded instructional model.It conducted a case study with the course of academic reading and discussion for academic master students in the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.It made the best out of the co-constructed,graded,discipline-and-skill-specific instructional resources,and creatively employed overseas students as important human instructional resources.It cultivated students' information literacy in disciplines and trained them to master academic language application competence.It proved improvement in instructional efficiency and received good feedback according to the effect analysis and satisfaction survey.This dissertation studied and analyzed instructional resources and instructional model based on the survey of information literacy and students' need in general English for agricultural graduate students.It formed certain trains of thought,views and results therein.It holds significance for theoretical research and practice guidance for individualistic instructional-resources-based embedded instruction for general English for agricultural graduate students,and will provide reference for instructional model for the cultivation of modern agricultural talents capable of international communication.