Teaching Staff’s Perspectives About Students’ English Proficiency

Funded by MOE Tier 1 Funding

The on-going project titled “Teaching staff’s perspectives about students’ English Proficiency” is a follow-up research study based on the previous research findings from the completed project funded by MOE Tertiary Education Research Fund (TRF) regarding the efficacy of the English Proficiency (EP) programme in SUSS. The current project aims to shed more light on what can be done to provide better academic English support to students in their academic studies by examining teaching staff’s perceptions of students’ academic English levels and the critical role of academic English to students’ readiness to succeed in their academic studies at English-medium universities. With the adoption of mixed methods, an established survey was conducted with 400 teaching staff across different academic disciplines in the university, including full-time faculty members, part-time associates and HoPs in different programmes. It attempts to understand the different roles academic English might play to facilitate students’ disciplinary studies in the English-medium university, such as the teaching staff’s perceptions of students’ competence levels and their expectations across various disciplines. Semi-structured interviews were followed up with 10 respondents to explore the in-depth perceptions to triangulate the survey data. The project just finished the data collection process for both quantitative and qualitative data, and is at the preliminary stage of data analysis.

Watch this space for research updates!