Inga Rozgienė

Effectiveness of the Course English for Academic Purposes and Research: The Learner Perspective

Effectiveness of the Course English for Academic Purposes and Research:  

The Learner Perspective 

Inga Rozgienė 

Vilnius University, Lithuania 

The aim of this paper is to present the results of a survey undertaken to find out students’ perception of the effectiveness of the course English for Academic Purposes and Research (CEFR level C1) introduced into Vilnius University in 2019. The course is constructed using the principles of the action-oriented approach, where students are exposed to typical situations encountered in the academic environment and engaged in appropriate interaction and mediation activities to identify and propose a solution to global and/or subject-related problems through collaborative critical analysis of authentic sources. The course aims to develop a range of capabilities embracing not only communicative language competencies but also transferable, academic, and subject-specific skills, which are assessed through production activities.  

The sample of the study consisted of 70 first-year students at the Faculty of Chemistry and Geosciences who were asked to complete a questionnaire immediately after the examination and evaluate the effectiveness of the course from different perspectives. The respondents were asked to assess their own progress in terms of the acquisition of transferable and academic skills, language proficiency, and subject-specific knowledge. They were also asked to evaluate the activities, assignments and tasks regarding their usefulness, rank them by their difficulty and specify the ones that posed the greatest cognitive challenge.   

The results indicate that the repertoire and sequence of the tasks create a strong platform for the development of competencies set in the description of the course; however, some adjustments (e.g., giving preference to certain activities, allocation of more time to practice particular tasks, or even raising the visibility of the usefulness of some formats) could be made to increase the efficacy of the course.  

Keywords: course effectiveness, English for Academic Purposes and Research, action-based approach, learner’s competencies, authentic materials  

Biography

Inga Rozgienė is a lecturer at the Department of Foreign Language Teaching and Research of the Institute of Foreign Languages (Faculty of Philology), Vilnius University, Lithuania. 

She has been teaching English for Specific Purposes, and English for Academic Purposes and Research to students of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Nanomaterials Chemistry programs at the Faculty of Chemistry and Geosciences since 2009. Research interests include teaching ESP, content and language-integrated learning, designing course materials based on authentic sources, and the possibilities of using technology in language teaching.