Abstract:

University students usually need foreign languages to be able to find information from a variety of sources and/or share their own in both spoken and written modes, disregarding their field of study. Due to the fact that they attend different academic courses related to their academic disciplines, in which they would like to get knowledge in order to be able to work as professionals later, they do not have enough time to attend language courses quite often. In case they do, the proficiency level of each student is so different that English courses mostly concern general English and developing communicative language skills.

The idea to support university students’ language competence in their academic context resulted in the decision to write a course that would be available and accessible any time students would want or need to consult the aspects related to learning or using academic English. Since this online course was developed 5 years ago, it became necessary to evaluate its impact on language acquisition of those who signed up for the courses that were tailored to them, hinged on needs analysis.

The article presents research, conducted in 2019, based on an analysis of data achieved in the questionnaires that were sent to those former university students who completed their master-degree or PhD programmes at Trnava University and attended the above-mentioned online EAP course. The analysis is aimed at discovering benefits and drawbacks of such a course. Both close-ended and open-ended questions allowed for making decisions referring to what should be re-written, re-formulate or completely replaced by newly developed materials. All the collected data were analysed with the aim to update the course that might be used with or without teacher’s counselling, which enables students to work independently, with regard to their own pace and previous language experience and knowledge.

The article offers a brief overview of the course in question and a deep analysis of the achieved data. Conclusions and decisions made with regard to present-day students’ needs and wants will be clearly presented and discussed.

Keywords:

EAP courses, students' needs, questionnaires, analysis, language acquisition.