How to Coordinate the Course Design with BE Students’ Needs

Li Lixin Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

May,2007

OutlineIntroduction

Importance of Coordinating BE Course Design with Students’ Needs

Ways of Matching up BE Course Design with Students’ Needs

Conclusion

1. Introduction Aim:

to explore and analyze the importance and ways of matching up BE course design with students’ needs according to rules and theories in ESP, economics of language, and needs analysis, and then a comparatively new model of BE course design is introduced and discussed in order to induce more attention and study in this area.

English was the key to the international currencies of technology and commerce (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987, p.7)

1.25 to 1.85 billion people use English as a communication tool , 380 million native English speakers (Kameda, 2005, p.177)

400 universities/colleges in China have offered BE major/minor(2004); 547(2005); BE major code (050249S) (2006 in UIBE)

• educating model, course design and course materials vary greatly (proved by Heilongjiang University research in 2006).

1. Introduction

2. Importance of Coordinating BE Course Design with Students’ Needs

2.1. What are students’ needs?

One of the most general definitions of need: “as a gap or measurable discrepancy between a current state of affairs and a desired future state” (Berwick, 1989, p.52)

Needs analysis/ needs assessment shows “the gap between what is and what should be” (Brindley, 1989, p.65)

◘ Hutchinson and Waters(1987) generalize needs into

target needs (e.g.: necessities, lacks, wants) necessities roughly refers to what the learner has to

know in order to function effectively in the target situation; lacks refer to what is known compared with what must be known by the learner; wants refer to the learners’ perception of what needs to be known.

learning needs (such factors as attitude, motivation, awareness, personality, learning styles and strategies, social background).

Most BE course design in China can only take students’/learners’ target needs into consideration , needs analysis is usually conducted within certain university or a comparatively small region.

2.2. Why is it important to match up BE course design with students’ needs?

1). Students’ needs decide the educating model and course design, because they are BE learners and will-be practitioners .

ESP “is defined as goal-oriented language learning or a type of ELT (English language teaching) in the end ”(Robinson, 1991, p.2), and one of its absolute characteristics “is defined to meet specific needs of the learner”( Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998, pp. 4-5).

BE, as one part of ESP, can be defined as Business-oriented English learning, undoubtedly needs to meet BE students’ needs at college/ university level. In other words, BE course has to be designed in line with students’ /learners’ needs.

2). Students’ needs are greatly influenced by the society’s need for BE practitioners

BEC Exam

Ministry of Personnel & Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation of China jointly issued “Temporary Provision of IBPQ Examination” (on January 8, 1994), and “Requirements for Advanced IBPQ” (trial version) (on February 14, 1996). Then International Business Engineer Examination attracted more and more BE learners.

• Information exchange and management ability of International Business Engineer:

the competence to master one foreign language, to carry out business activities independently, to correctly translate foreign business materials of about 5000 characters within two hours, to collect and deal with international business information and data by means of computer skillfully.

BE becomes an indispensable tool to survive in the international business world.

The nationwide labor market’s needs for BE practitioners force universities/colleges to have needs analysis in order to improve their course designs and better prepare BE students for the society’s need

3). University BE students need a better course design to match up with their needs in BE practicing area, job market, to provide them with a stronger position in the competition with the students from secondary technical schools/institutes for professional training.

Since university BE course design takes longer time, higher tuition fees in general, which naturally draw such elements in “economics of language” as value, utility, cost and benefit into BE students’ consideration.

• Economics of language refers to the paradigm of mainstream theoretical economics and uses the concepts and tools of economics in the study of relationships featuring linguistic […] variables; it focuses principally, but not exclusively, on those relationships in which economic variables also play a part (Grin, 1999, p.13).

• Generally speaking, the economic concepts of supply, demand and market for any given goods or service also apply to language goods (such as BE).

• Language learning----human capital investment, BE learning----one of the hottest investment

• Students’ cost of investment in BE courses is expected to be in line with the anticipated benefits, value and utility of BE in the market.

• The cost-benefit relationship will definitely influence BE course design in the universities / colleges. It has to produce better economic benefits for BE students than that of secondary schools or institutes so as to sustain a favorable condition in job market.

3. Ways of Matching up BE Course Design with Students’ Needs

3.1. Two ways can be generally accepted Pre-needs analysis course design: is carried out

before needs analysis is conducted advantage----to take shorter time in course

design and meet the urgent need of BE practitioners

disadvantage----course design may not match up with the society’s needs for BE practitioners, the investment in BE courses may not bring about the anticipated benefits.

After-needs analysis course design: is carried out after needs analysis is conducted

advantage---- achieve the goal of learning in a more efficient way, and such elements as value, utility, cost and benefit are reflected in a satisfactory way.

disadvantage---- take longer time to design courses, may only suit a specific group of students or specific need within a period of time

it is impractical for universities to have needs analysis at national level first, then design BE courses accordingly, for every one would like to offer BE courses earlier and get a share in BE education market.

The third way of BE course design is to have pre-analysis course design, then make some adjustment to the course design based on succeeding needs analysis.

• Both target needs and learning needs analyses should be done in order to achieve the optimization of BE course design.

3.2. A new model, or a variant model of general business-oriented model initiated by and applied in Northeast Normal University (NENU), is introduced and discussed to show how to apply the third way to BE course design.

• BE course design models: specific major-oriented model: English+One Major (e.g.: International Trade /Accounting/Finance/…) general business-oriented model: English+ Business English+Busniess+Computer Technology (NEN

U)

Which model is better? ----No final answer.• The economic value of BE course design at the

individual level: categorized into market and non-market values, long-term and short-term benefits.

• Market values: reflected in prices or some such indicator (income, earnings); non-market values are not reflected in market prices (knowledge structure for future development).

• The cost of non-market value investment will be returned during one’s working life/in long term.

• University BE education is different from vocational education in short-term benefits and non-market value costs, needs some model with its own features.

a new model/a variant model: (NENU) English+Busniess+Computer Technology

3 parts besides the common courses required for all majors at universities

English major-related courses: Business major-related courses: Computer major-related courses: A survey on BE students’ target needs analysis in co

urse design was conducted to test the new model.

Subjects: BE-oriented graduates, bachelorsGraduates 2005:165; Graduates 2006:167) questionnaire research:

Questionnaires in Chinese 5 questions for all; 1 question exclusively for Graduates 2005 one year after graduation Analyzed from quantitative and qualitative perspectives with SPSS12 & Microsoft Excel

Date Handed out copies Students

June, 2005 81% valid (2 hours) Graduates 2005

June, 2006 80% valid (1 hour) Graduates 2006

September, 2006 88% valid (4 days) Graduates 2005

? Question 1: Percentages of English, Business, Computer related courses against all courses (impression, during four-year study)

Charter 1-1. English Courses against All Courses

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80% 70% 65% 60% 55% 50% 45% 40% 35% 30%

Graduates 2005

Graduates 2006

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60% 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10%

Graduates 2005

Graduates 2006

Charter 1-2. Business Courses against All Courses

Charter 1-3 Computer Courses against All Course

0102030405060

30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5%

Graduates 2005 Graduates 2006

? Question 2: whether the percentage was appropriate or not, what would be the appropriate percentage.

Choice Graduates 2005 Graduates 2006

Very appropriate 1% 3%

Appropriate 61% 66%

Inappropriate 35% 31%

Compared with Charter 1, among “Inappropriate” ones, suggested percentage :Graduates 2005: English was 10% higher, Computer was 10% lower than BE students’ needs. Graduates 2006: Computer was 10% lower than BE students’ needs.

• Actual course percentage allocation? Adjustment to our course design, especially

Computer courses

Number Credits

Total 52 185

English 21 = 40.4% 97 = 52.4%

Business 23 = 44.2% 66 = 35.7%

Computer 8 = 15.4% 22 = 11.9%

? Question 3: whether our course design is helpful to BE students’ ability training or not.

Scale: Very Helpful, Helpful, Useful , Useless

Course names: (Charters 2) 1-16 represent

Listening and Speaking (1), Oral English (2), Audio-visual English (3), Movie-play Appreciation (4), Reading (5), Newspapers-periodicals Reading (6), Economy-Trade Reading (7), Business Communication (8), Basic English (9), Business English (10), Comprehensive English (11), British-American Literature (12), Writing (13), Business Writing (14), Business Interpretation (15) ,Translation (16)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16Case Number

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120V

alue

Very Helpful (Graduates 2005)Helpful (Graduates 2005)

Useful (Graduates 2005)Useless (Graduates 2005)

Charter 2-1. Evaluation of Graduates 2005 on English Courses

Notes: 12% of Graduates 2005 thought “British-American Literature” (12) was useless

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16Case Number

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120

Valu

eVery Helpful (Graduates 2006)Helpful (Graduates 2006)

Useful (Graduates 2006)Useless (Graduates 2006)

Charter 2-2. Evaluation of Graduates 2006 on English Courses

Graduates 2006: 22% thought “Business Communication”( 8), 16% “Oral English”(2), “Newspapers-periodicals Reading”(6) were useless for BE students. The other percentage concerning “Useless” choice were less than 15%.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16Case Number

0

20

40

60

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120V

alu

eVery Helpful (Year 06)Helpful (Year 06)

Useful (Year 06)Useless (Year 06)

Charter 2-3. Evaluation of Year 06 by Graduates 2005 on English Courses

Graduates 2005 after one-year experience: strongly supported our English course design, except British-American Literature (12), 34% feel useless.

Business courses: Number 1-12 in Charter 3 refers to Economics (1), Western Economics (2), Applied Economics (3), Management (4), International Trade (5), International Trade Practice (6), International Finance (7), Marketing (8), E-Business (9), Business Ethics (10), International Commercial Law (11),Applied Mathematics (12).

24% and 16% of Graduates 2005 thought E-Business (9) , Business Ethics (10) useless to BE students. No comments on International Commercial Law (11), Applied Mathematics (12), because they were selective courses and less than 100 students chose them.

0

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60

80

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Very Useful (Graduates 2005) Helpful (Graduates 2005)

Useful (Graduates 2005) Useless (Graduates 2005)

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60

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Very Useful (Graduates 2006) Helpful (Graduates 2006)

Useful (Graduates 2006) Useless (Graduates 2006)

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60

80

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Very Useful (Year 06) Helpful (Year 06)

Useful (Year 06) Useless (Year 06)

Computer courses: Next slide (Charter 4) 1-5 refers to Computer Theory (1), E-business Database Technology (2), Web Technology (3), Computer Programming (4),E-business Web Site Technology (5).

First group of 5 bars: comments of Graduates 2005

Second group of 5 bars: comments of Graduates 2006,

Third group of 5 bars: one year later, Graduates 2005

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

Very Useful Helpful Useful Useless

? Question 4 :whether our courses design is in line with our graduates’ employment or not

A-F refers to foreign company, national company (non-governmental/ private company), governmental organization, university/ school, unemployment

0

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70

A B D E F

Graduates 2005

Graduates 2006

Year 06

? Question 5: satisfaction degree towards employment of the surveyed students.

Five levels: very satisfactory, satisfactory, acceptable, unsatisfactory, very unsatisfactory

Table1: “unsatisfactory” and “very unsatisfactory” levels in 2005 and 2006 are quite similar (Std. deviations:1.1314 and 0.4243), mean unsatisfactory level is 13.6%.

The “very satisfactory” level (21.9%) in 2006 is much higher than that (7.3%) in 2005. The mean satisfactory level in 2 years reaches 42.5%, and the mean acceptable level is 39.8% during the two years

It can be concluded that our course design model helps 82.3% of BE students find suitable jobs.

? Last question: exclusively for Graduates 2005 one year after graduation, to which sector they will plan to transfer during the next five years

They can have more than one choice. 54.3% chose to transfer to foreign enterprise, 20% chose governmental organization, 14.3% chose university and school, 8.6% chose national enterprise and self-

employment. Foreign enterprises will be the focus sector of

employment for BE students within the following five years at least.

4. Conclusion The above statistical analysis strongly proves that our

new BE course design model matches up with BE students’ need in a satisfactory way .

Percentage allocation of English, Business and Computer courses (around 45%+35%+15%) .

Percentage has to be flexible due to the change of students’ English level and their target needs .

University BE students do not know their exact needs, because of having no working experience; university can not determine the society’s needs for BE practitioner, and has to adapt its BE educating model, course design and course materials to the needs of BE learners and the society through continuous and repetitive researches and needs analysis. .