Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
DO WE KNOW WHAT THEY (THINK THEY) NEED? COMPARING STUDENT AND FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF WRITING IN AN ENGLISH STUDIES PROGRAM Johanna Hasanen¹, Lauren Freede²
¹Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany ²Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
As language instructors in an English Studies department at a German university, we are investigating whether there are discrepancies between our Anglophone perceptions of student experience, skills and needs in this particular E(S)AP environment and students’ own perceptions (Benesch 1996), as well as those of content instructors within a Germanlanguage discourse culture (Clyne 1987). This comparative writing needs analysis study reports on a survey of 150 undergraduate students in an English Studies program in Germany as well as a parallel survey of the needs perception of the program’s faculty members who teach content courses in English without an explicit focus on language instruction. Many academic writing studies involving needs analyses and learner perceptions focus on generic academic writing needs at Englishmedium universities rather than the growing area of individual programs delivered in English in an EFL setting (Leki and Carson 1994). Moreover, student and teacher beliefs are frequently viewed separately (Petric 2002) or with little acknowledgement that their perceptions run counter to each other (Butler et al. 2014). This study triangulates student, subject and languageteaching faculty perceptions of student written English needs. Preliminary results not only reveal significant perception differences but also highlight a common set of unmet language needs relevant for instructors in higher education dealing with similarly contradictory expectations.
References
Benesch, S. (1996) ‘Needs Analysis and Curriculum Development in EAP: An Example of a Critical Approach’. TESOL Quarterly 30(4), 723–738
Butler, D.B. et al. (2014) ‘Student and Teacher Perceptions of Academic English Writing in Russia’. Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes [online] 2 (2), 203–227. Available from <http://espeap.junis.ni.ac.rs/index.php/espeap/article/view/132> [15 January 2015]
Clyne, M. (1987) ‘Cultural differences in the organization of academic texts: English and German’. Journal of Pragmatics 11 (2), 211–241
Leki, I. and Carson, J. (1994) ‘Students’ Perceptions of EAP Writing Instruction and Writing Needs Across the Disciplines’. TESOL Quarterly 28 (1), 81–101
Petric, B (2002) ‘Students’ Attitudes towards Writing and the Development of Academic Writing Skills’. Writing Center Journal [online] 22 (2), 9–27. Available from <http://espeap.junis.ni.ac.rs/index.php/espeap/article/view/132> [14 January 2015]