Tạp chí Khoa học Đại học Mở Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh - Khoa học Xã hội (Nov 2012)
Relations between epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology and methods in social reseach.
Abstract
The study aimed at investigating the graduates (academic year 2004-2008) from the English faculties of eight universities in HCMC with three majors: TESOL, Translation and Business English. The study applied the quantitative research methodology and data collected via the 138 graduates and 10 employers together with the data from the Office of Academic of the eight surveyed universities. Semi interview was also conducted with these 10 employers. The graduates from the English faculties had bright job opportunities (76.1% of them had suitable or quite suitable job and 5.1% were jobless). Their job was flexible and not limit to what they had been trained for and they had great demand of studying for another profession. Their income was rather high. They felt satisfied to some extent with the program they had studied as the curriculum had provided them with good basic knowledge but the professional knowledge was good just for teaching, while those who worked as translators or in business did not have sufficient knowledge. The employers rated fairly the graduate’ basic knowledge and professional one. They were happy as the graduates could meet the work requirement as most of them could teach English right away. If graduates did not teach, they had to equip more with the knowledge and skills needed of their current work. The graduates had good professional morality and citizen responsibilities, study skills and adaptability. The employers appreciated their problem solving ability. These would make up for the graduates’ lack of professional knowledge at the beginning of their work. In general both graduates self rated and employers rated graduates fairly in quality. Basing on the findings, the study suggested that all the programs should provide additional professional knowledge and skills, pay attention to developing the language skills, soft skills, and study skills and each program should foster its own objectives to distinguish itself from others.
