STUDENT/CONSUMER SATISFACTION SURVEY
HOLISTIC ENGLISH vs. TRADITIONAL ORAL ENGLISH
MARTIN WOLFF
Sun Yat-sen University
INTRODUCTION
Under the leadership of Dean XIA Jimei, PhD and Vice-Dean Wang Zhe, PhD, Sun Yat-sen University (Zhongshan), Guangzhou, a top tier university, arguably has one of China’s most innovative, progressive and successful English teaching programs (TEFL), having received numerous national English teaching awards.
In the pursuit of English teaching excellence, commencing in March 2009, Holistic English has been taught to post-graduate non-English majors. At the end of each semester the students/consumers are asked to answer an anonymous questionnaire indicating the amount of benefits they perceive to have received from the Holistic English program, ranking them from 1 – 10, with ten being the most beneficial. The areas of perceived benefits are:
Chart 1
Vocabulary
Reading
Oral
Writing
Listening
Chart 2
Confidence
Creative Thinking
Autonomous Learning Skills
Chart 3
World View
The students’ questionnaire answers were then tabulated and depicted in graph form. The graphs in the following right hand column summarize the Holistic English students’ perceived benefits. (600 students for the spring 2009 term, 700 students for the fall 2009 term and 700 students for the spring 2010 term.) See graphs B, D, H, J, L, N, P, R T and X.
The Department of English Teaching administration selected a group of 3 classes for the March 2009 semester; 4 classes for the September 2009 semester and ____ classes for the March 2010 semester, to use for comparison of students’ perceived benefits. The control group classes of post-graduate non-English majors were taught a traditional oral English program, by some of the Department’s best teachers. At the end of each semester the students/consumers in the control group were also asked to answer the same questionnaire as answered by the Holistic English students. The students’ questionnaire answers were then tabulated and depicted in graph form. The graphs in the following left hand column summarize the control group students’ perceived benefits. (129 students for the spring 2009 term, 172 students for the fall 2009 term and ____ students for the spring 2010 term.) See graphs A, C, G, I, K, O, Q, S and W.
In the spring 2009 semester 10% of the students in the control group filled out the questionnaire in Chinese instead of English.
In the fall 2009 semester 14.5% of the students failed to follow the simple written English instructions causing numerous Questionnaires to be invalidated.
Class 22 - 6 Questionnaires invalid
Class 23 - 1 Questionnaire invalid
Class 24 - 6 Questionnaires invalid
Class 26 – 12 Questionnaires invalid
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Holistic English vs. Traditional Oral English
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