A Tentative Analysis Of English Majors' Learning Needs Directed To School-based EGP Curriculum Development In Chongqing Education College

Assessing students'needs is an indispensable step in EGP (English for General Purposes) curriculum development, implementation and evaluation. Given the realities learners vary across various internal and external factors and the students in Chongqing Education College (CEC) differ from those in other colleges and universities, CEC needs to re-assess the degree to which their students'learning needs are being met by the existing language curricula, so that policy and resources can be adjusted accordingly to meet the students'local needs. The current study reports on a large-scale assessment designed to investigate the learning needs of students in the English department at CEC to evaluate the degree to which these needs are being addressed. Recognizing that the primary objective of these majors is to reach the basic requirements of English proficiency, this study utilized a formative method to elicit the objective and subjective needs for EGP curriculum. A number of qualitative and quantitative data were drawn by means of survey and documentation. Results showed that the existing EGP curriculum was not quite efficient for the vast majority of English majors failed to reach the basic requirements imposed on the non-English major undergraduates as evidenced by CET-4. When it came to the EGP curriculum, the findings showed that the learners'learning needs were not fulfilled due to the deficiencies inherent in the curriculum design and difficulties arising in the implementation of the EGP curriculum. The author has concluded that learner-centered curriculum asks for a school-based EGP curriculum development and the comprehensive centralized EGP curriculum needs adaptation to meet the local needs of the subjects. Thus the dissertation proposes an alternative, that is, integrated EGP curriculum, integrated from the proficiency goal, curriculum design down to pedagogy.