How Did Taiwanese Undergraduate Students Perceive Their English Reading and Writing Abilities?

Abstract

Needs analyses can help demystify EFL students’ learning needs. This survey study with nineteen advanced EFL students from a university in southern Taiwan aimed to investigate how they perceived their English reading and writing abilities to help design a suitable curriculum to enhance their English for academic and professional purposes. The results of this study revealed that they perceived more challenges derived from their control over sentence-level grammar and limited vocabulary bank. However, they reported that their reading and writing abilities were above average. Explicit instruction to enhance their problem-solving skills, focusing on their common problems, combined with well-planned classroom activities that include expository writing and oral reports, may help them upgrade their overall performance when communicating in English for personal and professional purposes.