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摘要：The present study focuses on design of EAP courses at the postgraduate level. It isinspired by the researcher’s personal observation that Science and Engineering postgraduatesare often confronted with tasks through medium of English, such as publishing researchresults in English, attending international meetings, etc.

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study
In China, Science and Engineering postgraduates have specific English needs. Thisreality has been widely accepted in the English teaching field. English is now indisputably thelanguage of international scholarship and research. The ever-increasing trend of academicglobalization imposes higher requirements upon postgraduate students’ academic Englishproficiency other than his or her professional knowledge. If they don’t have access to latestacademic information, it will be very hard for them to carry out their research work. Mostinternational database, such as the Science Citation Index and many other internationaljournals are predominantly in English. Meanwhile, many colleges also encourage or evenrequire postgraduate students to publish papers in English academic journals. Chinese Scienceand Engineering postgraduates are also actively participating in many international scientificsymposiums in which oral academic skills are of great significance for them.However, the postgraduates English Curriculum issued in 1992 is oriented by trainingliteracy skills and imparting general language knowledge, it doesn't pay enough attention tolearners’ academic English proficiency. That is to say, in most institutions of higher educationin China, postgraduate English courses are mainly aimed to improve the basic language skillswhich can’t meet the needs of the students to improve their academic English proficiency.Furthermore, it is a fact that each university has its own characteristics of students' quality,teaching staff and educational facilities. Therefore, it is unadvisable to confine all colleges toonly one curriculum which even turns out to be outdated to some extent. Thus, it seems thatpostgraduate English teaching reform is unavoidable.
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1.2 Purposes of the Study
The present study focuses on design of EAP courses at the postgraduate level. It isinspired by the researcher’s personal observation that Science and Engineering postgraduatesare often confronted with tasks through medium of English, such as publishing researchresults in English, attending international meetings, etc., but most of them have greatdifficulty in completing these tasks. It is questionable whether or not the presently offered English courses in most universities truly cater to students’ needs. It seems necessary toexplore how the postgraduate English courses could help them in completing their academictasks. In most domestic universities, English courses for postgraduates consists of two parts,English for General Purpose (EGP) courses and ESAP courses. It deserves some explorationinto the question that if these courses have played their expected role in improving learner’sacademic English competence. According to many scholars, reformation of currentcurriculum is unavoidable, but no definite conclusion has been drawn about the direction ofreformation. The researcher of the present study wants to find out that whether an all-EAPcurriculum is possible and necessary for Science and Engineering postgraduates.Thus, the specific researching purposes of this thesis going as following: to evaluate towhat extent that the current English curriculum for postgraduates can meet students’ academicEnglish learning needs; to survey the postgraduates’ attitude and expectation towardcurriculum reformation; to ex本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。