Analysis of ESP Instructing and Innovation of College English Teaching.docx

1、Analysis of ESP Instructing and Innovation of College English TeachingAnalysis of ESP Instructing and Innovation of College English Teaching Abstract In contemporary society, with comprehensive promotion of global economy, there is an urgent need for well-rounded talents in a wide variety of profess

2、ional fields, which undoubtedly set a higher goal for the broadly-based education. The innovation of English teaching in higher education plays a significant and active function in the process of cultivating all-rounded talents. At present, EPS instruction has been penetrating into the innovation of

3、 English teaching education actively. Key words: ESP instructing; College English teaching; Innovation INTRODUCTION for the integrated development of economic globalization and widespread use of English as the accepted international language of technology and commerce, there is a growing need for we

4、ll-rounded talents in the market. However, there are serious problems existing in English instructing in most of Chinese educational institutions. Instructors put more emphasis on EGP teaching but ignore ESP teaching, which is an obvious unbalanced state between ESP English instructing and EGP Engli

5、sh teaching for a long period. Under such circumstances, it seriously restricts the innovation of English teaching and is not conductive to effectively train well-rounded English language professional talents with high efficiency and professional qualification. To a certain extent, it has also influ

6、enced the comprehensive development of Chinese education service for economy. The paper illustrates the current situation and innovation of Chinese English teaching within the framework of ESP theory in order to give some hints in college English reform and cultivate comprehensive graduates qualifie

7、d for the ever-changing and more challenging talent markets in the near future. 1. AN OVERVIEW OF ESP INSTRUCTING Since the appearance of ESP theory in the 1960s, it has aroused great attention in English teaching process. Different scholars have defined ESP instructing in various ways, among which

8、Holme (1996, pp.3-4) explain the relationship of ESP and General English as the following: it is in the nature of a language syllabus to be selective. The General English syllabus is based on a conception of the kind of reality that the student has to deal with in EnglishConsciously or unconsciously

9、, all sensible course designers must begin by trying to assess students specific needs. ESP is simply a narrowing of this needs spectrum. Reflecting from the view point of Holme, it is concluded that ESP courses are narrower in focus than ELT (English Language Teaching) courses, cause it is advocate

10、d to be “narrowing down the spectrum”. Actually the development of ESP was believed to be brought about by two inseparable components with the development in the fields of linguistics as the first one and the expansion of demand for English to suit particular needs as the second one (Hutchinson & Wa

11、ters, 2002, p.8). 2. PROBLEMS OF ESP INSTRUCTING IN PRESENT ENGLISH TEACHING 2.1 Less Effective ESP Teaching Pattern Nowadays the basic theoretical knowledge still remains the key in most ESP instructing process, it is believed to be lack of attempt and verification for the cultivation of applicable

12、 ability of students. At present, there is one kind of deviation phenomenon in the ESP teaching of China, the majority of English teachers use the EGP teaching pattern for ESP curriculum teaching. The traditional teaching method of so called “indoctrination” with teachers translating English into Ch

13、inese word for word, explaining and analyzing critical points according to curriculum teaching requirements is still popular in the classroom without obvious change. It is not surprisingly to see that the conventional way of teaching is not conductive to explore the full potential of students. This

14、kind of traditional teaching pattern is very hard to cultivate outstanding graduates adapting to the needs of modern social development, moreover, it couldnt effectively impel the students to improve their all round ability of learning English with five skills of listening, speaking, reading, writin

15、g and interpreting. In addition, this kind of one-way transmission teaching method that focuses on the teachers and ignores subjective initiative of the students will create one kind of dull learning environment, which is not conductive to the development and exertion of initiative and enthusiasm of

16、 students to learn English actively. In the long run, the students will have the mind of being fed up with studying, which has an evident negative impact on the effect of English instructing of teaching result being far from satisfaction consequently. Under such circumstances, the English level of s

17、tudents cant reach a certain required level, which will lead to the fact that the graduates are less qualified for the knowledge economy and the employment of students in the market economy to be disadvantageous. 2.2 Less Emphasis on ESP Instructing In contemporary English teaching process, there is

18、 a serious phenomenon in most colleges, that is, the English instructors usually lay too much stress on EGP teaching while ignore ESP teaching. For example, for students the school authorities will probably not set up specialized ESP teaching curricula while for teachers it will carry out few ESP tr

19、aining, as a result, it lacks the necessary academic exchange between EGP teachers and ESP teachers. In addition, the talent training pattern adopted by most of the schools in China currently is 2+1 combined pattern that is not conductive to the development of students in an all-around way, which wo

20、uld largely reduce the time for students to learn English in school. However, in order to guarantee the setting of time for learning general courses, colleges constantly reduce the class hours of ESP courses, moreover, ESP courses have been defined as elective courses and examination courses by most

21、 of the schools. Generally speaking, there are four-period class hours per week and the specific time for class is different, therefore, it is hard to ensure the teaching quality and teaching efficiency of ESP courses. 2.3 Less Pertinent Teaching Materials The content of teaching materials should se

22、rve for the teaching objective and keep consistent with teaching objective at any moment, the training objective of talents is to cultivate excellent professional compound talents with high professional qualification. In terms of occupational skill talents training, English working skills and social

23、 service skills covered by the content of ESP teaching materials should be adopted according to current demands for English professional positions. However, most of editing work for the content of Chinese ESP teaching materials is done by the teachers who dont fully comprehend the ESP teaching objec

24、tive and EGP teaching contents required by ESP courses, as a result, the content of ESP teaching materials lose the essence of ESP instructing, and lack necessary pertinence and practicability, which is difficult to meet the needs of students and leads to the fact that the content of ESP teaching ma

25、terials deviate from annotation of theoretical knowledge to a large extent. The content of teaching materials like these is also universal existence in college English instructing, the contents that are lack of pertinence and effectiveness are often dull and obsolete or too profound to understand, w

26、hich is too difficult for students to grasp and apply. It is hard to improve the application competence of students in the process of learning ESP courses in the long run. 2.4 Few ESP Teaching Staff and Relatively Weak Teaching Quality At present, there are some problems existing in the components o

27、f ESP teaching staff. On the one hand, few professional teaching staff of ESP cant guarantee the needs of students for academic learning; on the other hand, relatively weak teaching quality of ESP teachers cant effectively train compound talents with high skills and high quality. The nature of ESP t

28、eaching requires that English teachers should bear both solid professional basic knowledge and strong English competence, however, the ESP teaching staff in most colleges is composed of teachers who pay more attention to EGP as well as specialized English teachers who emphasize certain specialized f

29、ields of English. Therefore, two problems appear considering all these factors: (a) Although teachers of specialized course have solid professional knowledge, most of them lack the ability of language teaching, they often prioritize the teaching of professional knowledge in terms of ESP teaching and

30、 apply the traditional teaching method of “word for word translation” in passage explanation, while ignore instructing students with pronunciation, grammar, sentence pattern and other high-skilled knowledge; (b) It is generally known that the English teachers should have solid basic skills of langua

31、ge, deep understanding of the nature and characteristic of English, but recently most English teachers lack of necessary understanding of society and necessary professional background, so they cant grasp and comprehend career knowledge of certain professional fields. They often apply the traditional

32、 English teaching method in view of the explanation on job professional knowledge so that the explanation on critical knowledge points breaks away from actual requirement for improving comprehensive skills of the students. To conclude from what has been discussed above, it is safely to insist that n

33、o matter which problem exists, ESP teaching quality will be greatly influenced negatively and need to be improved urgently. 3. COLLEGE ENGLISH TEACHING INNOVATION 3.1 Integrating ESP Teaching Pattern with EGP Teaching Mode It is commonly assumed that students have mastered the basic knowledge of pronunciation and gram