Bio Data:
Dr. Xiao has a PhD in Second Language Education from Dublin City University, Ireland, and has worked as a full-time university teacher of English at university level for 22 years in China and has over five years’ teaching and research experience in Canada and Ireland.

Abstract
This study investigates Chinese English major students’ learning needs including their attitudes towards student-centred and traditional teaching approaches, culture learning in EFL program, attitudes towards authority in class, the main problems encountered in the course of their learning English, and their practice of language learning strategies. The findings of this research will provide Chinese EFL teachers with insightful information on learners' learning needs as an input to syllabus and materials planning, to lesson planning and classroom instruction practice. The study demonstrates the importance of a good understanding of learner variables in TEFL programs at university level in China.

Introduction
The diversity of needs of English language learners has long been acknowledged (cf. Tarone & Yule, 1989). Researchers also propose that teachers should outline correct learner expectations and attitudes about how languages are learned and also explain the reasoning behind classroom methods, in order to reduce any gap between learner and teacher beliefs (e.g.Horwitz, 1985Wenden, 1986; McCargar, 1993; Kern, 1995; Peacock, 1999. In China the revised national English language teaching curriculum for English majors at tertiary level calls for innovation in teaching methodology, i.e., a learner-centred or communicative approach (CA) should be employed in English classrooms (English Division, 2000). However, research suggests that, despite the widespread adoption of CA by textbooks and curricula around the world, CA principles in classroom are rare, with most teachers professing commitment to the communicative approach but following more structural approaches in their classrooms (Karavas, 1996, p.187).

A learning-centred approach to lessons, materials and syllabus design advocates the involvement of learners in contributing to this design. Learners should be invited to express their views on their needs for learning the language, their preferred learning styles (Willing, 1988), their beliefs about language learning or their preferred activity types (Barkhuisen, 1998). These views then can inform the classroom instruction and design process (cf. Spratt, 1999). In keeping with a learner-centred or communicative approach, its goals are focused on students and their success. When designing courses for English major students, it is necessary that the English teachers have reliable information on their learner variables so that what is taught, how it is taught and what is tested matches learners’ needs as closely as possible.

Berwick (1989) claims that a need is expressed ‘as a gap or measurable discrepancy between a current state of affairs and a desired future state’ (p.52). Bachman and Palmer (1996) argue that ‘needs analysis, or needs assessment, involves the systematic gathering of specific information about the language needs of learners and the analysis of this information for purposes of language syllabus design’ (p.102). distinguish between two types of needs: target needs and learning needs. Target needs comprise necessities (what the learner has to know in order to function effectively in the target situation), lacks (the gap between target and existing proficiency of the learner), and wants (the learners’ view on their needs). Learning needs, on the other hand, is a cover term for all the factors connected to the process of learning like attitude, motivation, awareness, personality, learning styles and strategies, social background etc.

   According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987), the best methodology for studying the needs of any particular group of students is to use such methods as questionnaires, follow-up interviews, and collection of authentic texts. The main concern of this investigation will be an analysis of the learning needs of Chinese EFL learners at university level. The learning needs are further broken down into attitude, motivation, learning styles, perceived difficulties, and strategies. For more clarification of these elements, an attempt will be made here to examine the learners' classroom activity preferences, their attitudes towards student-centred and teacher-centred approaches, towards authority in class, culture learning in EFL program, their motivation, and the main problems encountered in the course of their learning English and their practice of language learning strategies. The aim of this study is to gain insightful information on learners' needs and preferences as an input to syllabus and materials planning, and to lesson planning and classroom instructional practice. Another aim of this study is to see whether there is a need to modify our objectives or to update our programs in light of the findings of this investigation. Although the actual needs of English majors might vary across the country, the applied process of questionnaire design, validation and data analysis can serve as a model or example for other institutions in China or in other parts of the world.

2. The study: Details of subjects
This is part of a larger investigation on Chinese EFL learners’ needs and preferences carried out over the past three years, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In this empirical study, the subjects consisted of 210 English-major students from a multi-faculty university in North China. The questionnaire data were gathered in the last 20 minutes of the students' class time, via prior agreement with the teachers. The selection of student informants was completely random with a view to accessing a large number of students from different levels.

3. The questionnaires
Questionnaires were used as the initial survey instrument for students and the questionnaire consisted of 58 items including a section of main problems which students have encountered so far in their English learning process, and another section of 3 open-ended questions. The questionnaires were written in Chinese and five-point Likert scale was used. For example, (1), strongly disagree, (2), disagree, (3), neutral, (4), Agree, (5), Strongly agree (See appendix). 

4. Methodology
The student data were grouped into 5 different subgroups based on their university year at undergraduate and postgraduate level. The purpose of doing this was to identify similarities and differences between the sub-groups and subsequently the causes of the variation can be explored. In analysing the 5 subgroups, a statistical technique - one-way ANOVA Test - was used to identify whether the mean scores on a variable differed significantly from one group to another by taking into account variation within groups as well as between groups. The data collected from questionnaire were categorized into 12 inter-related themes (See Section 5 below). This way of categorization corresponds with Quinn’s (1984) characteristics of communicative and traditional approaches [1] (cited in Nunan, 1988), and the definition of 'weak version of communicative teaching' (Howatt, 1984: 279).

5. Data analysis and discussion
Students’ attitudes towards group work in class (Items 1, 2, 3, 4)
The findings show that the students approach group-work positively. The results indicate that students like small discussion groups and working in pairs in English class. Taking this categorization as a whole, the ANOVA Test finds that Item 1 to be statistically significant (P<0.013). The difference mainly exists between 2nd-year MA graduates and 4th-year undergraduates. The former is much more interested in group-work than the latter. These differences might be explained by the fact that MA students have a smaller class with teacher directed or initiated discussions. Given their advanced English proficiency and their specialized area of their study, there is more group work in which students and teachers, and students among themselves interact. This positive experience reinforces, in turn, their own positive attitudes towards working in a small group in class.

   For 4th-year undergraduates, both the larger class size and the nature of courses taught resulted in a less positive attitude towards group work. Job placement was their major concern and many of them were busy preparing for graduate-study entrance exams or TOEFL, IELTS, or GRE. Some were hoping English would be a springboard to further study in other departments, e.g. Finance, International Trade and Economics, Journalism. Small group discussion was not of great interest to them. This result supported the investigation of the North Project Group (1998) which reported that English language teaching in the final year of undergraduate programmes was found to have its own particular problems in China.

Students’ attitudes towards speaking out in class (Items 5, 6, 7, 9, 57)
The students’ responses to Items 5 showed that students would like to be active in speaking English while engaged in group activities, and the results of Item 5 were statistically significant. MA students showed more favourable attitudes than undergraduates (P<0.026) because of the similar reasons as mentioned above. However, on Item 57 students as a whole showed a negative attitude towards asking or answering questions in class. This phenomenon may derive from the assumption that students considered a small group to be a more protective environment in which they would feel freer to communicate in English than a situation in which they were forced to speak in front of the whole class. The results indicate the following:

   A preliminary analysis of Item 57 indicates that this result, to certain degree, seems to support the claims reported in earlier studies that Chinese students were reticent in class and did not answer questions unless asked to (Burnaby & Sun, 1989), or 'Chinese students are expected to show total obedience or submission to their teachers’ (Song, 1995, p.35). However, what the open-ended section and follow-up interview (in a separate study) data reveals is that the reasons for their apparent reticence in the English language class was more closely related with teaching performance than cultural or psychological traits. In other words, what really matters in class is multi-faceted and includes many factors: teaching methodology, the ways the questions were asked and whether answers were specifically elicited, the topics chosen for group discussion, and the students' own perceptions of being active in class.

   When asked if they would like to outperform their peers or maintain harmony in class or in group work, students' responses to Item 7 revealed their mixed feelings about this: about 32% of the students were concerned about group harmony in class and tended to avoid ‘showing off' whereas 35% of them showed their intent to be very active in group-work. Another 32% of the students remained neutral. The findings indicated that more students seemed to feel comfortable speaking English in a small group and they tended to view a small group (2-4 students) as a more protective environment than speaking in front of the whole class. Linking Item 7 to Item 6, we can find that the majority of students were concerned with maintaining group harmony, and some of them were willing to be more active than others in group activities. This finding supports some other studies of Chinese students' behaviours, which reveal collective-oriented national cultural traits in the classroom (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996; Littlewood, 2001). Students’ responses to Item 9 revealed that students often thought carefully before speaking English in class. The findings indicated that about 60% of students surveyed tended to focus more on accuracy than on fluency as this would help them avoid making mistakes or experiencing loss of ‘face’ (Bond, 1991; Mao, 1994).

   The implication of this finding is that teachers should give students enough time to think before they speak while also encouraging quick and impromptu replies from the students. In Chinese culture, being active in class does not necessarily mean getting physically involved in the classroom activities. Being mentally active also means being co-operative with the teacher and actively listening to the teacher (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996). Students are often concerned about their own linguistic accuracy or fearful of losing ‘face’, and therefore actually speak very little in English class. This goes against communicative English language teaching principles, which emphasizes fluency over accuracy and focuses on students’ involvement in classroom activities.

  On Item 8, the ANOVA Test shows that significant difference exists between the 2nd-year MA students and 2nd-year undergraduate (P<0.002). The findings remind teachers that language learning strategies (LLS) need to be taught explicitly rather than leave it to learners themselves to cope unconsciously in their EFL learning process. The gap between 2nd-year undergraduates and 2-year MA students might derive from the different language skills acquired by the two groups. This also indicates that the improvement of language skills, in the case of 2nd-year MA students boosted their confidence with the result that their anxiety is lower than 2nd-year undergraduates. This assumption is supported by earlier studies. For instance, insecurity and anxiety tend to diminish if learners gain more linguistic proficiency and more positive experience (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1989).

   The implication of this finding for teachers is that they should be aware of the fact that student anxiety created by, among other things, a tense classroom environment might be one of the most potent factors undermining students’ classroom behaviour. On the other hand, explicit explanation of language learning strategies and frequent engagement of students in interactive classroom activities are very important and necessary in class. In short, teachers need to ‘create a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere in the classroom’ (Garret & Shortall, 2002: 30) and provide more opportunities for learners to practise in interactive group activities in order to reinforce the positive experience. Less practice will lead to less confidence and therefore less actual ability to use the target language, especially orally.

Nature and strength of motivation among students
(Item 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
The results showed students liked learning English and were interested in learning about major English-speaking countries. Their interest focused on the culture, science and technology of English-speaking countries. The findings also indicated that students had an instrumental motivation in learning English which encompassed their desire to work very hard towards a goal which would benefit their families as well as themselves. This finding supports similar assumptions made by some earlier studies (Littlewood, 2001; Bond, 1991). Littlewood described Chinese college students in Hong Kong as having a typical social achievement motivation, characterized in a collectivist-oriented culture, that is, they are motivated to succeed because success would bring prestige and other benefits to their families. In China, it is a virtue to involve the value and interest of family with what one is pursuing (Littlewood, 2001; Bond, 1991). However, the findings of Item 47 revealed that sustaining strong motivation exclusively through a long-term goal is, to certain extent, problematic. This situation possibly derives from the fact that most students were not clear what they would do after graduation. Neither were they content with EFL teaching in the university since teaching and learning have reciprocal effects. This assumption is confirmed by the qualitative data findings in the follow-up interviews in a separate study.

Students’ attitudes towards TCA in class (Item 18)
The results showed that the student group as a whole held a mildly negative attitude towards teacher-centred approach (TCA). The Frequency Table showed that 19% (40) and 8.1% (17) of students chose ‘4’ (agree) and ‘5’ (strongly agree) respectively whereas 25.7% (54) and 14.8% (31) selected ‘2’ (disagree) and ‘1’ (strongly disagree). There are 32.4% (68) respondents remaining neutral. This indicates that students found TCA to be effective on some occasions but ineffective on others. The perceived effectiveness seemed to depend on different variables, such as the teacher's competence, the textbook, and the nature of the course taught. The results of the ANOVA test shows that the difference between 2nd-year MA graduates and 4th-year undergraduates is statistically significant (P<0.008). This result reveals that different classroom activities carried out between the two groups could reinforce their disposition to their different favoured activities in class. As mentioned earlier, a smaller class size and more teacher-initiated or directed discussion in class led MA students towards rating TCA less effectively than did the 4th-year students.

Students' attitudes towards SCA in class (Item 19)
Contrast to Item 18, the findings of Item 19 showed that the students surveyed liked a student-centred approach. 17.1% (36) of the students selected ‘5’ (strongly agree) and 35.7% (75) chose ‘4’ (agree), 2.9% (6) students chose ‘1’ (strongly disagree), and 8.6% (18) select ‘2’ (disagree). Moreover, 75 (35.7%) students acknowledged that they had mixed feelings about SCA, i.e. they considered student-centred methods to be efficient in some ways but unhelpful in others. Of the students surveyed as a whole, it seems that the pendulum of their favoured teaching methods swings from TCA to SCA although they consider both approaches to be useful in their own way.

   The findings are supported by the results of open-ended questions, which revealed that only 31% of students surveyed were in favour of TCA in contrast to 70% in support of SCA. This reveals that a ‘pure’ student- or teacher-centred approach falls wide of the mark regarding English classes; both need to be used in combination to suit the Chinese EFL context. A Chinese saying sums up the need for synthesis thus, ‘extracting the essence while discarding the dross’ (qu chu  qu  jing) and 'making foreign things serve China' by late Chairman Mao (yang wei zhong yong), indicating that the strengths inherent in both approaches need to be maintained and synthesised to make EFL teaching effective. Pica (2000) argues that all methods have their own conceptually distinctive characteristics. No single method could possibly meet all of a learner's needs’ (Pica, 2000). As Kumaravadivelu (1994) has pointed out, teachers must seek not alternative methods, but an alternative to methods. Such an alternative would be based on their professional experience and awareness of learner needs, and the adjustments they make to cope with the realities and dynamics of the classroom.

Students’ attitudes to communicative activities in class (Items 21, 22, 25)
The findings showed that students liked class discussions and enjoyed seeing English films or watching video shows. If students found that they had something to talk about after seeing a film or a video show, they would like to participate in a group discussion with the teacher’s guidance and facilitation which would help them increase their understanding of the films/video shows. They also expressed their strong desire that in English class they would expect teachers to stimulate their interest and analytical thinking ability through thought-provoking questions. Such findings are not surprising. As the follow-up classroom observations revealed, the ways teachers elicited answers or responses were found to be quite ill-thought out. The teachers concerned very often asked only ‘display question’ (questions that had obvious right answers) (Long & Sato, 1983 cited in Walsh, 2002, p.6). As Walsh argues display questions are possibly appropriate to geography or maths classes, but in L2 or EFL classes they seem to deny language learners access to critical thinking and real language use (Walsh, 2002). The implications of these findings are clear. Teachers need to initiate questions at a discourse level which allow the students' judgement, reasoning and critical thinking to be brought into play.

Students’ attitudes towards non-communicative activities in class
(Item 20, 24, 42)
The findings of Item 20 showed that students expressed mixed attitudes towards the traditional Intensive Reading method – a kind of teaching method in which the English text materials are dealt with in over-meticulous detail and a sentence-by-sentence way. The findings showed that 36.2% (76) of the students favoured this teaching method whereas 34.2% (72) did not favour it and 30% (62) remained neutral. The results indicate that many students still think the Intensive Reading (now renamed comprehensive reading) method is a very important way of teaching and learning English in class, and that grammatical structures need to be emphasised. It was clear that teacher-centeredness was commonly found to be a dominant teaching method in the classroom. The ANOVA test showed that the results of Item 20 were significantly different between the 2nd-year undergraduates and the MA students (P<0.008). As described above, given the MA students' advanced English proficiency and their positive experience in small group activities in class, they responded to this meticulous teaching method negatively whereas the 2nd-year undergraduates seemed to feel comfortable with this traditional teaching method to which they had been exposed since their pre-college schooling.

   The results of Item 24 revealed that the students as a whole responded negatively to simulation test exercises in which teachers merely explained the answers to students in class. The ANOVA test showed that a significant difference existed between the 2nd-year undergraduates and the other groups, except the 4th-year undergraduates (P<0.003). The findings indicated that the 2nd-year students seemed to be exam-oriented and were under pressure to pass English tests, especially the EMT-4. This was confirmed by their responses to Item 53: the EMT-4 test was found to exert heavy pressure on them. Although the 4th-year students had to take EMT-8 test, they seemed to be less pressurised than the 2nd-year students because the passing of MET-8, unlike EMT-4, has not been linked to the awarding of a BA degree in the EFL programme.

   On Item 42, 47% (99) of the students surveyed did not consider that the main task of students in class was to receive knowledge from the teacher whereas 25% (52) students thought that the students' role in class was to listen to the teacher. 28% (59) students were neutral, believing in the mixed roles for students to play in class. The findings of this item support the results of Item 18: students showed a mildly negative attitude to teacher-centred approach (TCA) in class. The ANOVA test showed that a significant difference existed between the 4th year undergraduates and the 2nd-year MA students regarding Item 42 (P<0.012). The difference may be explained by the fact that the 4th-year students were busy looking for jobs and were less committed to their English learning. Therefore they regarded teacher-centred methods 'secure' and relaxing' whereas the 2nd year MA students were susceptible to participating in small group activities in which students were expected to take more initiatives in class.

   The findings of Item 42 reveal that, about half of the students in this survey hold positive attitudes towards learning whereas the other half of students surveyed still stick to the traditional roles of students in class or have unclear perceptions of different roles which students are expected to play in class. The findings also demonstrate the necessity of making explicit what roles both students and teachers are supposed to play in the classroom-based setting. However, it would be inaccurate to deduce that ‘Chinese students are mere passive learners’ as reported in some earlier studies (Oxford & Anderson, 1995; Stefani, 1997). We need to know the real cause of their apparent passivity.

Culture learning in EFL (Items 11, 36，37, 23)
Students’ responses to Items 11 and 37 indicated that in English class they liked to learn about target cultures, including the western people’s way of life, social customs and so on. They expressed a strong desire for a synthesised pedagogy that could properly combine learning English and learning target cultures in EFL programmes. At the same time, students indicated that although they had learned a little about target cultures in English class, they would like to learn more. This finding indicates the need to develop a pedagogy which can integrate culture into EFL education in order to enhance students' sociocultural competence as required by the revised national curriculum for English majors. 

Students’ attitudes towards compensation strategies(Item 29, 31, 32)
On Item 29, the results of the ANOVA Test showed a significant difference between the 2nd-year undergraduates and other groups (P<0.000). The 2nd-year undergraduates tended to refer to L1 when they found it hard to express themselves orally in English whereas the other groups responded negatively. The results reveal that their dependence on L1 is closely related to their target language skills and awareness of use of language learning strategies (LLS). The dependence on L1 tends to drop with improvement in target language skills and awareness of LLS use in the EFL learning process. The results of Item 31 showed that students did not often use gestures to enhance their communication, indicating the need to learn and use LLS on their part. The findings of Item 32 showed that students preferred to use paraphrases to 'get meanings across’ when they could not think of a word during a conversation in English. By linking Item 32 to Item 29, we find that even if most students tended to use ‘paraphrases’ in English conversations, about 30% of the students were not content with their own ability to ‘get meanings across’. This could be due to their inadequate target language proficiency and lack of conscious use of LLS. The findings alerted teachers to the importance of the explicit teaching of communication and language learning strategies in English class. It is misplaced to assume that students can automatically make use of the skills of their native language when communicating in the target language. These communicative skills are not transferred automatically without explicit teaching or learning. Teachers need to raise students' consciousness and provide them with more opportunities to use these strategies (O'Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford 1990). This reflects the necessity of integrating communicative components of CLT into current traditional teaching methods in order to develop learners' communicative competence.

 Students’ attitudes towards social strategies (Item 33, 34, 35)
The findings of Item 33 clearly revealed that most students did not have a peer with whom they often practised oral English on a regular basis. The results of the ANOVA Test showed a significant difference between 2nd-year and 4th-year undergraduates (P<0.032). This finding reveals that the 4th-year students who are taken up with job seeking spend even less time than 2nd-year students practising their oral English with peers outside class. The 2nd-year undergraduates need to take EMT-4 oral test along with its written test, and therefore they have to pay more attention to oral practice. Once the EMT-4 test is behind them, it seems that practising English outside class recedes and students do not seek opportunities to speak English with peers. 

   Item 34 and 35 also revealed that students surveyed are not interested in taking part in after-class activities in which English was practised, for example, in an English corner drama group or newspaper group. Their reasons for not being interested in this might be that they thought such activities did not provide them with authentic English input and that they could not learn idiomatic or 'real' English by practising spoken English with their peers. The findings indicate that it is vital to create a teacher-initiated environment in which students feel relaxed and confident to practise their spoken English in the Chinese EFL context.

Students’ attitudes towards authority in class (Items 43, 44, 45, 46)
The findings of Item 44 indicated that students did not rate teacher authority very highly. This finding is supported by the results of Items 43 and 45 which reveal that most students want to be active rather than passive learners in the process of acquiring knowledge. The findings of these items are incongruent with the reports in earlier studies which claim that teachers are perceived as a ‘fount of knowledge’ from whom the knowledge is transmitted to students (Maley 1984; Liu, 1998; Song, 1995) and Asian students including Chinese are expected to show ‘total obedience or submission to their teachers’, to be ‘passive receivers of knowledge’ and that they offer ‘little input to the class’ (Song, 1995, p.35). Generalizations such as these are often expressed not only by outsiders but also by Chinese researchers as well (Littlewood, 2001). It is usually claimed that differences in power and authority are accepted most readily in more collectivist cultures (Hofstede, 1994; Smith & Bond, 1993). In a classroom-based setting, a general orientation towards (or dependence on) the group is also likely to lead students to accepting roles which are defined in terms of their position within that group, from the teacher at the top of the hierarchy to the students at the bottom (Littlewood, 2001).

   The findings of Item 44 seem to indicate that a change in concepts of learning and teaching has been taking place, especially among young people who now are exposed increasingly to the foreign cultures via TV, films, multimedia, personal contacts, and Internet. This change will, in principle, certainly have an impact on their English language learning and classroom behaviours. However, it is worth noting that the results of Item 44 are not backed up by the findings in the follow-up interviews and classroom observations in a separate study.

   When they were asked to comment on their attitudes towards teacher’s authority in class during the interviews, many students said that they were reluctant to challenge teacher’s authority in class. When asked to elaborate on perceptual mismatch between the interview accounts and questionnaire data, some students' comments are very informative. They said that they certainly held teachers’ authority high in class and showed their respect to the teacher. They thought that it was the basic thing they should do in class, but they emphasized that only good teachers would deserve a heart-felt respect from students whereas those teachers whose lectures were found to be boring, would not receive the real respect from students. This indicates that while teacher authority is important to them, it also has to be won, not taken as given. Good teachers are really respected while incompetent teachers are not, even though they are perceived to have 'authority' in the classroom. Consequently, when students find the courses they have been taking are not up to their expectations, they will inevitably notch down the teachers' authority accordingly, at least in their minds.

   This is similar to the Chinese equivalent of the English word respect - Zun Jing. Each of these two Chinese words has a separate meaning although, used in combination, they equate to respect in English. Zun means showing respect in action (body language or facial expressions), but this is at surface level. The real respect derives from Jing which means a kind of admiration from the bottom of one's heart. Therefore we can say that the justification of real respect is based on good quality of teaching performance and teacher's being a moral example to students (Jiao shu yu ren) rather than a perceived unequal relationship between Chinese teachers and students in class.

   As revealed in the open-ended questions, only 22% of the students under study found the current teaching methods satisfactory while 76% did not like the teaching methods used by teachers in their English classes at all. Moreover, the results clearly point to the necessity in using different research procedures to triangulate the validity of research findings in this study.

Major difficulties encountered in students' learning process
(Items 40, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56)
The findings of Item 48 indicated that over half of the students surveyed considered their own learning styles to be rigid and not very efficient, and needed improving. The follow-up interviews with students revealed that they considered their learning styles, to a considerable degree, had been influenced by teachers' teaching styles in the classroom. Their learning experience reinforced their learning habits. The findings of this item are supported by Item 54, which shows that the current teaching methods focus too much on grammar and structure but ignore oral English practice. The results of the ANOVA Test show that Item 54 proves to be significantly different between 2nd-year and 3rd-year students (P<0.014). A possible explanation of these differences is that some teachers who taught 2nd-year English majors have attempted to use different methods in their classes to offer students more opportunities to practise their oral English. Therefore the 2nd-year students remained neutral on Item 54 whereas the 3rd-year students considered current teaching methods too much focused on grammar and structure.

   This finding supports some earlier studies by some western researchers in the related areas. Pintrich and Schunk (1996) point out that teachers and students have reciprocal effects on each other. Teacher classroom instruction affects students’ learning orientation (Zubir, 1988 cited in Gow et al., 1996), and, in turn, teacher instruction is affected by the way students respond to classroom activities (Salili, 2001). Linking Items 40, 41 with Item 48, we can see that the problems inherent in students’ learning styles are mainly related to memory strategies, that is, while students memorize the vocabulary, they often ignore the context in which these words are used. In most cases, they separated vocabulary from its context. They listed all the new words in a notebook and tried to memorize as many as they could whenever and wherever it was possible.

   This is not surprising because in China vocabulary books often take the form of providing learners with so-called 'shortcuts', i.e. learning by heart new words in order to pass the various exams, for example, TOFEL, GRE, EMT-4 and EMT-8. The findings of Item 41 reveal that, in most cases, new words are not learned in a contextual or discourse manner. That is why students find it hard to retrieve these items when they want to use them appropriately. The traditional Intensive Reading teaching methods reinforce such learning styles. In terms of vocabulary learning, rote learning, it is true, plays a major role. However, these learning styles are not a merely cultural or psychological trait of Chinese students, but the result of acquired habits in school and the way the target language has been learned and practised within and outside class.

   On Item 50, the majority of students thought that there was lack of authentic materials, both audio and visual, in EFL teaching. The ANOVA test showed the significant difference on this item between the 2nd-year MA students and the 2nd-year undergraduates (P<0.019). A possible reason for this difference lies in the fact that the 2nd-year MA students had a higher level of exposure to the target language than the 2nd-year undergraduates, and this reflected their differing views from those of other groups.

   Item 52 indicates that majority of the respondents think that they have very few opportunities to practise their spoken English in Intensive Reading class. The findings reveal that the current conventional teaching methods have to be improved in line with students’ needs to improve their practical skills of the target language. On Item 55, 70% (149) of the students thought the textbooks were not suitable for CLT nor culture learning in English class. The findings indicated that the cultural information or knowledge contained in the text materials fell well short of what students would expect. As their English language proficiency improved, they would become more and more interested in target cultures and their curiosity about Western cultures would be aroused. The findings here show that a pedagogical framework of culture learning in EFL syllabus at tertiary level is absolutely necessary in order to meet learners’ needs and broaden their horizons - itself a key component in crossing the threshold to sociocultural competence.

  To sum up, in judging the findings of this study in relation to the theoretical foundation of the communicative competence model (Canale & Swain, 1980; Canale, 1983), it is obvious that these learners were deficient in major aspects of communicative competence. They were not content with their current linguistic competence and they found spoken English difficult. They called for a synthesized pedagogy to combine culture learning and English language learning in EFL programmes, which they see as an important step towards enhancing their sociolinguistic competence. The findings also show that most undergraduate students are not aware of conscious use of language learning strategies in their learning process.

6. Conclusion
The students in this investigation show, on the whole, more favourable attitudes towards communicative classroom activities than non-communicative ones. This sounds very encouraging for teachers who are engaged in innovations in teaching methods. Students also show strong interest in learning target cultures and call for innovation in combining English teaching and culture teaching. On the other hand, the students are not inclined to see all activities emphasizing formal linguistic competence as less effective than those emphasizing the communicative functions of language. They are not inclined to reject indiscriminately the traditional way of teaching English.

   However, the results of the study do show a tendency that most of the students favour a well-planned combination of communicative and non-communicative activities that will enhance both effective teaching and learning at different levels. As is evident that there is no single 'cure-all' or 'the best' teaching method which can be expected to deal with everything concerning the target language teaching, such as its form, its use and its content. The ideal way to innovate English teaching and to meet learner needs at tertiary level is to modernize, that is, to reconcile communicative activities with non-communicative activities that are proved effective in English teaching and learning (Rao, 2002). Chinese students' learning English can be facilitated if teachers can develop their own ‘locally appropriate version of the communicative approach’ (Thompson, 1996, p. 36).

  It is worth noting that in the process of devising such teaching methods, teachers have to develop their own awareness and competence in both pedagogical and methodological sense. In other words, the gap between what communicative activities demand and what the EFL education in China admits has to be resolved 'through culturally and historically situated exploration of non-Western language learning classrooms (Sullivan, 2002) before Chinese students can benefit fully from these communicative classroom learning activities across the board. To find possible solutions to these issues, focused attention should be given, among other things, to the proper reconciliation between communicative and traditional approaches that are fine tuned and supplemented to each other. It should be noted that the findings should feed into classroom practice, and provide guidance for materials and syllabus revision and a pedagogical framework for developing learners’ intercultural communicative competence.

   My aim in writing this paper is not so much to report on the nature of the learning needs but to illustrate what sort of learning needs had to be considered, and how these needs had to be approached. It is believed the results of this study show the great value of obtaining learners' views on activities that form part of the learning process. The analysis of learner needs described in this paper has some major implications.

Note:
Communicative activities or student-centred activities are defined as those which involve students in using the language for communicative purposes, (e.g. work in pairs or group discussion or even role plays as a setting for a communicative task), and which focus more on fluency than accuracy, pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language.

The non-communicative activities or teacher-centred activities refer to the language classroom activities in which the teacher is very much the focal point of the class work, exercising considerable control over the activity and the language that is elicited from the students.

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Appendix A B C
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