The Discussion on the Improvement of Business English Major in Vocational Colleges

◎Huizi Wu

The Discussion on the Improvement of Business English Major in Vocational Colleges

◎Huizi Wu

students of Business English Major are in great demand. The study starts from analyzing the important position of intercultural business communication. Then, it generalizes the current situation of Business English Major in some vocational colleges and the main weak points of colleges, teachers and students. Lastly the writer puts forward suggestions on how to change this present disadvantages. The paper contends that the study on the improvement of Business English Major in vocational colleges that needs to be adjusted and reformed urgently can provide multiple implications on Business English in terms of its theory, scope, pedagogy and other aspects.

1、Introduction

With the rapid development of our society and the global increasing connection and cooperation, the demand for interdisciplinary talents is urgent. Therefore, the importance of Business English is standing out day by day. Many vocational colleges make full use of this opportunity and try their best to foster interdisciplinary talents Meanwhile, it put forwards a great challenge for students、teachers and colleges.

2、Current Situation of Business English Major

Students of Business English Major are in great demand year by year, then what’s the current situation of Business English in most of vocational colleges? Based on the investigation of Business English Major in some vocational colleges in Anhui Province, the writer finds that the current situation is not satisfying. That’s to say, in the aspects of personal training plan, curriculum systems and teaching systems, it is already could not meet the need of the development realities.

The writer points out the current situation based on the analysis and discussion on the results of investigation..

2.1 Current Situation of Vocational Colleges

It is known to us that setting up rational allocation of curriculum system is the basis for cultivating interdisciplinary talents. During the past several years, Lvhai Vocational College of Business has made great innovation, such as adjustment and adding new professional courses. It seems that the allocation of curriculum system matches the BE(Business English) major well. However, there exist some serious problems. For example, the allocation of time on every course in this major is not rational in some aspects. For example, students have four terms to study in college. During the first and second term, what they study is listening, speaking, reading and writing. The course that is related to Business English is International Business Letters and BEC, which are taught in the third and fourth term respectively. The writer thinks it is irrational for students to spend so much time on the four basic skills of English and the time allocation on business English is far too little.

2.2 Current Situation of teachers

The teachers in vocational colleges are mostly from normal colleges or universities. Most of them haven’t the specific knowledge about business. Most of them havn’t the experience of foreign trade. When assigned the task of teaching the courses, they only spend some time on self-studying the courses before imparting this knowledge to students, which is far from the requirement of cultivating students.

2.3 Current Situation of students

Compared with the students in “985”and“211”universtities, those in vocational colleges have disadvantages in studying this subject, such as having not good command of knowledge, lack of confidence and weariness in study which are all barriers for them.

2.4 Current Situation of teaching concepts and methods

Improving students’all-around English competence is an impending demand and has become the goal of business English teaching nowadays. Various reforms and attempts at achieving the goal have been carried out in classes. Then what methods should be used in teaching BE courses? So far, referring to approaches to teaching BE courses, there are a lot of methods, such as case-based teaching method, communicative Language teaching method and task-based teaching method. As far as the writer knows, every teacher uses a different method in teaching BE courses. Which method is the best? Is there any other better method? The writer has been trying the case-task-based approach under the support of Professor Liu and Professor Tong in English Department. The so called case-task-based approach can be applied to every teacher teaching the BE courses well?

3、Suggestions for Improving the Current Situation

According to the above, thecurrent situation needs to be innovated urgently. Based on the further investigation of Lvhai Vocational College of Business and some other colleges, the writer puts forward some suggestions for improving the current situation.

3.1 Suggestions for Vocational Colleges

1) Innovation of Curriculum of Business English

In order to meet the needs of our modern society and grasp the opportunity of enrolling more students, the administrators has already formulated Business English in a better way. However, the writer who has been teaching Business English major finds some problems and puts forward some suggestions.

Firstly, the time allocation on intensive reading, speaking, listening, extensive reading and writing of Business English should be reduced. The writer thinks it is a waste of time to spend so much time on studying the basic knowledge of English.

Secondly, in order to meet the needs of students and society, some new courses should be added. Such as Marketing, Legal knowledge and Negotiation Strategies. The above mentioned courses, which are all the basic needs for a student of Business English, should be included in the curriculum.

In a word, in order to cultivate excellent students, what should be taught includes not only more professional curriculum, but also more related curriculum. Besides, there is still call for BE curriculum reconstruction. A good curriculum should be divided into 4 categories, which are Subject Foundation Requirements, and some courses related to their future career. The first can be taught in the first term, the second can be taught in the second and third term, and the third can be taught in the fourth term. As to the General Foundation Requirements, they can be taught during the first two years.

2) Measures of encouraging teachers

The above mentioned that some teachers in Lvhai Vocational College of Business have been seeking opportunities to work part-time jobs in other colleges leading them have not spent enough time and energy to imparting knowledge and educating students, which is not good for teaching. The administrators should let teachers getting more pay for more work done and give them more opportunities to enhance themselves.

3.2 Suggestions for Teachers

Compared with teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing, the teaching of Business English requires too much of teachers, because it demands that teachers should not only have a good command of four skills of Language learning, but master many aspects related to Business English as well. Based on the investigation of teachers in Anhui Lvhai Vocational College of Business, the writer finds that most of English teachers are not qualified for teaching Business English because of lacking basic knowledge of Business English and lacking internships and work experience in companies.

Besides, teachers should realize that only teaching the knowledge of cultural, business and the communication strategies is far from being enough. We know that in a successful business communication, society, culture, organization, individuals are all important factors and each factor plays a vital role in it. The teachers of BE major should engage in further study to know all the dynamic factors and the interrelationships among factors and lead students to observe all kinds of problems that appear in cross-cultural communication in an overall, dynamic, multi-dimensional view, which is more important than knowledge itself.

3.3 Suggestions for Students

Compared with students in“985” universtities，the students in vocational colleges have many disadvantages, such as learning habits, frustration in study, which are all the barriers for them. In the writer’s opinion, as the students’ English level in vocational colleges is quite weak, they should read some books about Business English in Chinese, thus before studying the specific courses in English, he or she has already been familiar with what teachers will impart in classes and has a general outline of the courses. During the class, students should pay more attention to the knowledge. After class, they should learn to review the lessons.

3.4 Suggestions for Teaching Methods

Besides having a good command of Basic English and the basic related knowledge of business English, teachers should make students have a deep understanding of this knowledge and its special language and try their best to make students fully understand the knowledge. Take the translation for example.

我们要大力推进外贸体制改革,走集团化的道路,组建以外贸为龙头的工贸、农贸、技贸相结合的企业集团,以增强企业的竞争力。

Most of the students the writer teach translated“龙头”into “dragon head”. However, this is not proper in cultural communication. Most of foreigners do not know the origin of“龙头”.In East Asia it is a beneficent symbol of fertility, whereas in European tradition the dragon is firebreathing and tends to symbolize evil. Therefore, the use of the words such as flagship could eliminate the crosscultural barriers and make source language readers and target language readers understood.

In a word, the core of Foreign Trade lessons is the task. One important thing is that all parts of the language used should be deemphasized during activity itself, in order to get students focus on the task.

【作者吴卉子现就职于安徽绿海商务职业学院，就读于中国科技大学（博二）】