A Study Of Curriculum Design For English Majors From The Perspective Of Needs Analysis

For any educational program,curriculum design acts as a significant indicator of how pedagogical practices are planned,implemented and evaluated.To ensure the efficacy and effectiveness of a curriculum design,needs analysis from different perspectives is a primary and an essential prerequisite.Given that few studies have explored curriculum design for English majors from the perspective of needs analysis,this study investigated and analyzed the needs for English-major curriculum design from multiple perspectives in order to understand how the current English-major curriculum design and its implementation are perceived and make suggestions for better course development.Four groups of participants joined this study,including undergraduates,teachers,graduates and directors of human resources management from multiple affiliations.They were asked to share their opinions on English-major curriculum design in terms of its key elements,including course objectives,course types,course contents,teaching hours and course assessment.Through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews,relevant data was collected.Quantitative analysis was done to obtain frequencies,percentages,mean values and standard deviations of responses to the questionnaires and correlation analysis was conducted among the overall curriculum design and its key elements.Qualitative analysis was conducted to classify and analyze the major themes emerged in their responses to the interviews and the open-ended questions in the questionnaires to support the corresponding findings from the quantitative analysis.Results showed that the main needs of undergraduates,teachers,graduates and employers for English-major education are solid language skills and wide professional or general knowledge.They were most satisfied with reading skills and literature knowledge,while they were least satisfied with speaking skills and knowledge related to Business English and encyclopedia.Meanwhile,all of them perceive current curriculum design as relatively reasonable.However,courses on English speaking and Business English are not well implemented.The proportion of output-oriented language skill courses,professional knowledge courses,core and optional courses in general education as well as practice courses was insufficient,but the proportion of several compulsory courses regarding Marxist theories,military theories and histories was too high.Besides,formative assessment only accounts for a small proportion in the assessment system.Based on the discussion of results and findings,this study concludes that current curriculum design for English majors can basically meet the needs of learners and society,while courses concerning speaking skills,Business English and professional practice need to be improved.By implications,further improvement is needed to increase courses for output-oriented language skills,professional knowledge,core and optional contents in general education and practice,while the proportion of several compulsory courses related to general education should be reduced.Regarding assessment,more emphasis is expected to be placed on formative assessment to cultivate inter-disciplinary talents with general knowledge.Finally,limitations of this study and suggestions for future studies are presented.