Language Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices in Intensive English Courses at a Technical University in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chang-I Cheng, 鄭昶怡
• Other Authors: Hsiu-Ting Hung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/26358573061295335513

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語所 === 97 === Gaining English proficiency certificates has become imperative for college students seeking to pass the graduation thresholds recently set by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. Intensive English courses (IEC) for assisting students to pass such tests have thus attracted much attention from local researchers and practitioners. Although IEC have been widely investigated in many English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, little research has been done on IEC affiliated with colleges and universities in Taiwan, and the implementation of such courses remains experimental. Given the present research gap, the purpose of this study is to explore language teachers’ perceptions and practices in IEC at a public technical university in southern Taiwan in order to further our understanding and advance the practical use of such courses. This research adopted qualitative methods to investigate the teaching experiences of the IEC teachers. The participants were 20 teachers, four males and 16 females, who taught GEPT or TOEIC intensive courses during fall 2006 and spring 2008 at the site of the present study. The data sources included participant interviews and documents of course-related materials. The collected data were coded and then the content was analyzed through the constant comparison method to compare and contrast the similarities and differences within it. The findings of the research indicated that the majority of participants perceived the implementation of IEC positively. From the participants’ points of view, the benefits of IEC include offering students additional opportunities to learn English and focused instruction on test items or fundamental skills. However, despite the perceived value of IEC, the participants’ noted that there were some difficulties, with their comments focusing on the large class size of more than 40 students, the short six to eight week duration of the courses, the different proficiency levels among students, and the falling attendance rates related to the decreasing motivation of the students. The analysis concerning the participants’ pedagogical practices in IEC revealed four major themes, namely lecture-based teaching, drill-based teaching, use of Chinese as an instructional language, and minimal assignment of homework. By investigating the above perceptions and practices, form-focused instruction appears to be the main approach utilized by language teachers in IEC, as the teachers taught grammar explicitly in meaningful communicative activities. The research results lend support for the kind of form-focused instruction which has been recommended by many researchers and language educators for its ability to achieve the specific aim of training learners’ English ability in a concentrated period of time. To conclude, the results of this study have several pedagogical implications for English teachers and policy makers to better design and conduct IEC in order to meet college students’ language learning needs with regard to obtaining the English proficiency certificates necessary for graduation.