Research On Optimizing Academic English Speaking Course For Postgraduates Based On Competence-based Education

With increasing academic exchanges,more and more postgraduate students in China are invited to attend international academic meetings,study aboard and participate in academic lectures.However,academic English speaking course provided by many universities can't effectively improve postgraduate students' academic communication abilities.The research is to optimize academic English speaking course based on CBE.The research methodologies include interviews and 3 questionnaires which are “Required Competence Survey” “Competence Mastery Survey” and “Needs Analysis for Academic English Speaking”.The former 2 questionnaires aim to determine the core academic English speaking competences that students need acquire and how well they master.According to “Required Competence Survey” and “Competence Mastery Survey”,postgraduates need master 2 categories of academic English speaking competences which are hard academic English speaking competences and soft academic English speaking competences.The other questionnaire “Needs Analysis for Academic English Speaking” aims to investigate how well current academic speaking course satisfies postgraduates' needs for academic English speaking competences.To make results more reliable,two teachers of the course are interviewed in order to have a better understanding of current course and figure out what other competences postgraduate should acquire.The results show that both postgraduates and supervisors attach importance to all hard and soft academic English speaking competences.The core competences include “exchanging academic thinking with foreign scholars”,“giving academic English presentations and speeches”,“executive power” and etc.In addition,teachers interviewed emphasize “inter-culture communicative competence.Both postgraduates and supervisors hold generally negative attitudes towards students' mastery of the following the competences,the abilities to host international academic meetings,give academic English presentations and speeches,solve problems and etc.Also,the results of needs analysis indicate that current academic English speaking course could not meet the postgraduates' needs.Thus,core academic English speaking competences that postgraduates are lack of should be better incorporated into the curriculum optimization.Based on the situations above,some suggestions are put forward to systematically optimize academic English speaking course based on C BE.Firstly,academic English speaking teaching must be based on needs analysis for academic English speaking competences.Secondly,competence-based teaching objectives need to be set up in the academic English speaking course.Thirdly,in-class and out-class activities,teaching materials designed and adopted by teachers should target at cultivating the core academic English speaking competences that present postgraduate are lack of.Fourthly,teachers of academic English speaking course should work together with students and relevant educational department to establish a unified standard for measuring academic English speaking competences.Finally,the quality of teaching staff should be improved.