A Study of the Effects of Business English Curriculum on English Majors’ Performance on Graduate School Entrance Examination for Admission into Finance Programs

傅钰晶

17013925 17 级英语2 班

Abstract：Business English is an academic subject involving finance，trade，management and marketing，which takes English as a tool and aims at business skills.Business is defined as activities，organizations or works related to profits.The design and teaching of business English curriculum and its influence on students’ English level and grades have been studied in depth.And huge risks associated with graduate school entrance examination for admission into different programs due to a lack of professional knowledge and math skills have also been pointed out.Nonetheless，along with the unclear impact of the lack of subject matter knowledge and mathematics，the effects of business English curriculum on majors’ performance on graduate school entrance examination into finance programs are limited.A half-term survey examined business English majors who enrolled in Nanjing Audit University in 2015 about their attitudes toward and perceptions of the effects of existing curriculum and presented its shortcomings.Questionnaire and follow-up semi-structured interviews provided insights into specific effects.Even though students recognized the benefits from existing curriculum in English test and thinking ability in the personal interview，the disadvantages of mathematics test，the test of subject matter knowledge and preparation time for the examination were clearly explored through data analysis and discussion.Corresponding solutions were offered to improve the content and arrangement of business English curriculum.This study provides direction for school to develop the attitude towards public opinion and the efficiency of handling and solving problems and most importantly，adjust business English curriculum to make it more effective for all business English majors，especially students who take finance as their postgraduate research direction and cultivate more interdisciplinary and applied talents.

Key words：effects; business English curriculum; graduate school entrance examination; finance; shortcomings and solutions

1.Introduction

At present,English teaching in China can be divided into two categories,one is English literature and the other is business English.Business English came at a time when China was participating in the process of economic globalization with unprecedented depth and breadth.It is an academic subject involving finance,trade,management and marketing,which takes English as a tool and aims at business skills.“Business” here is defined as activities,organizations or works related to profits.

According to China's special national conditions,students who decide to further their education need to choose the direction of study and take the graduate school entrance examination for admission into desired programs.The examination consists of written exam and personal interview,and only by passing the written exam can one be qualified for the interview.The business part of business English is not completely consistent with finance.However,as the curriculum of business English is related to finance,part of English majors choose finance as their as their postgraduate research direction every year.

Although colleges have been adjusting business English curriculum to cultivate more interdisciplinary and applied talents and meet the needs,the passing rate of graduate school entrance examination and employment satisfaction rate are not optimistic.Some previous studies on business English have focused on the design and teaching of business English curriculum and its influence on students' English level and grades,and achieved remarkable results.Weng (2016)discussed needs analysis in business English curriculum design.Yuan (2018)explored problems and put forward strategies of business English curriculum design and teaching.And research by Lu(2017)supported that “the content of business English curriculum was not practical and extensive” (p.13).Others pointed out that there were huge risks associated with graduate school entrance examination for admission into different programs,particularly in the great difficulty of preparing for the examination due to a lack of professional knowledge and math skills.Gu (2016)stated that “the lack of subject matter knowledge had a great influence on students who took the graduate school entrance examination into other programs”(p.109).Ma and Zhou (2015)found that “most English majors in the college of law and business of Hubei Institute of Economic would face more obstacles in the graduate school entrance examination since math was not included in the curriculum” (p.157).Nonetheless,as of yet,only a few topics have been designed to study the specific effects of business English curriculum on the postgraduate examination into finance programs and the impact of the lack of subject matter knowledge and mathematics for business English majors are still unclear.In addition,the preceding researches cannot take precise consideration into English majors' attitudes toward and perceptions on it,and there are still some pitfalls that need to be addressed urgently.Therefore,this study which does not pay attention to the influence of individual intelligence and effort on the examination,but only analyzes the effects of business English curriculum itself aims to answer the following research questions:

(1)Do business English majors have their cognition and judgement of the content,arrangement and help of existing curriculum?

(2)What are the business English majors' attitudes toward the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs?

(3)What are the business English majors' perceptions of the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs?

(4)Does the existing curriculum for business English majors have some disadvantages? If so,what are they and what to do to solve the existing shortcomings?

This essay will first call for students' cognition and judgement of the content,arrangement and help of existing curriculum.Then,their attitudes and perceptions will be explored.Finally,the shortcomings and corresponding solutions will be presented.Based on rigorous and convincing survey with the assistance of questionnaire and interviews,this paper provides the direction for school to improve existing curriculum to make it more effective for all business English majors,especially students who take finance as their postgraduate research direction.

2.Methodology and Methods

Many studies have focused on the design and teaching of business English curriculum and its influence on students'English level and grades,and achieved remarkable results.However,only a few topics have been designed to study the effects of business English curriculum on the postgraduate examination of finance.In addition,the preceding researches cannot take precise consideration into English majors'attitudes toward and perceptions on it,and there are still some pitfalls that need to be addressed.Thus,in the present study,survey has been adopted as the methodology and the methods of data collection with the assistance of questionnaire and interview taken as the instruments in order to allow the attitudes toward and the perceptions of the effects of business English curriculum on English majors' performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs to be thoroughly investigated.

First,a questionnaire with “yes or no” questions was used to elicit students' cognition and judgement of existing curriculum at Nanjing Audit University.For example,do you think the content of existing curriculum for business English majors at NAU is reasonable? Later,specific questions with“what and how” were followed mainly to search business English majors' attitudes toward and perceptions of the effects of business English curriculum at Nanjing Audit University on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs.For instance,what do you think the business English curriculum did for the graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs? Finally,semi-structured interviews were employed to inquire the deeper ideas of business English majors to supplement the results of the questionnaire,so the shortcomings the existing curriculum at Nanjing Audit University for business English majors has could be fully explored along with some feasible methods were proposed.

2.1 Participants

To some extent,there are some differences in the overall similarity of business English curriculum in each university.In view of this,selecting business English majors from multiple universities is meaningless.There are sufficient reasons to choose Nanjing Audit University as the background.The teaching and research team of English majors in Nanjing Audit University is cooperative,progressive and full of vitality.Besides,the business English curriculum is adjusted year by year on the basis of national standards and is listed as a key construction project of the university.Even with some differences,most of the curriculum including basic English,advanced English,English listening,English speaking,English writing,Western economics,international trade,international settlement,international finance and other courses in general is similar in China.Hence,the findings drawn from Nanjing Audit University can provide reference for other colleges.

Business English majors who enrolled in 2015 have already taken the graduate school entrance examination this year,and the data from them can reflect more accurately the effects of existing business English curriculum at Nanjing Audit University on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs.

Of the 68 business English majors who enrolled in Nanjing Audit University in 2015,12 took finance as their postgraduate research direction.In this study,because of the small cardinality,all 12 students participated to ensure the accuracy of the results.Of the 12 participants,7 were females and 5 were males.Coincidentally,they were all 22 years old and had been educated in China since childhood,which excluded the influence of age and education.Moreover,none of the participants had flunked.It further indicated that their learning ability was not problematic.

2.2 Data Collection

Data were collected through questionnaires and semistructured interviews.

The questionnaire was written in plain English which was easy for business English majors to read,and it consisted of two steps.Before answering questions,students were required to fill in basic information,including their name,gender,age,educational background and phone number.It needs to be explained that the name was used for addressing in the semi-structured interviews and it did not appear in the post-processed tables to protect privacy.The first step was designed to learn the results of students' graduate examination and their own cognition and judgement on the content,arrangement and help of business English courses by using four “yes or no” questions.The second step contained three specific questions with “what and how”that students had to answer in detail to explore business English majors' attitudes toward and perceptions of the effects of business English curriculum at Nanjing Audit University on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs and get a general understanding of the existing disadvantages in order to prepare for the semi-structured interviews.What needs to be added is that in this step,students were allowed to use Chinese to subjoin some ideas that cannot be described in English in a short time.

The interviews with all 12 participants were conducted by telephone in Chinese to obtain more reliable information like students' thoughts for improvement and lasted about 15 minutes.Systematic questions were asked first and then followed the targeted questions.The combination of these two types of questions helped better seek the problems and solutions.

2.3 Data Analysis

After it was obtained,the data from questionnaire was processed at once,laying a foundation for the subsequent interviews.

The responses of every student to each “yes or no”question were first mathematically summed up and filled out in a coded form.Students' responses to “what and how”questions were then excerpted with key word or phrases,which were translated,categorized,counted and tabulated.The interviews were refined on the basis of questionnaire and the findings were presented by enumerating successively.

3.Results and Discussion

In this section,it reports the results followed from data analysis in four tables.Combined with the external environment and internal factors,these four tables are analyzed and interpreted in detail to describe threedimensional ideas.

Section 3.1 reports the answer to the first research question “Do business English majors have their cognition and judgement of the content,arrangement and help of existing curriculum?” Section 3.2 discusses the second and third research questions and part of the fourth research question “What are the business English majors'attitudes toward the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs?”,“What are the business English majors' perceptions of the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs?” and “Does the existing curriculum for business English majors have some disadvantages? If so,what are they?” Finally,Section 3.3 displays the further supplements to the first part of the fourth question and provides suggestions for the rest “And what to do to solve the existing shortcomings?”.

3.1 Business English majors' cognition and judgement of the content,arrangement and help of existing curriculum

This section reports business English majors' answers to four questions with different emphasis in the questionnaire:the result of graduate school entrance examination,the content of existing curriculum,the arrangement of existing curriculum and the help from the existing curriculum for graduate school entrance examination.Table 1 summarizes the total data,and these data are analyzed and interpreted in detail in the discussion section.

Table1.Results of graduate school entrance examination and students’ opinions on the existing curriculum

It can be seen intuitively from table 1 that only one student out of twelve have passed the graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs.According to recent data,the number of students applying for graduate education reached 2.38 million in 2018,an increase of 18.4% over 2017,which set a new record.Despite the surge in applicants,the overall acceptance rate for the last four years has been less than 30%,and due to more onerous review and less preparation time,the acceptance rate for students who apply for a graduate program that is different from their undergraduate program is relatively lower,which explains the answers to the first question in the questionnaire.

Although the result of the fourth question indicates that the existing curriculum is helpful to a certain degree,the students' responses to the second and third questions reveal that the existing curriculum is not reasonable in content and logical in arrangement.

In the interviews,the students who chose “hard to say” in the second,third and fourth question of questionnaire were asked the reason for choosing this item.The results showed that they all believed that the content and arrangement of finance courses were inappropriate and had been a hindrance to them,but those of English courses were reasonable and logical,which helped the English test in the written exam,thus they could not deny these two questions completely. Besides,through interviews,it was observed that the reasons of students for choosing “No” in the second,third and fourth question corresponded to the disadvantages presented in the answers to “what and how”questions.

3.2 Business English majors' attitudes toward and perceptions of the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs

Knowing about business English majors' attitudes and perceptions can help to intuitively assess whether the existing curriculum is complete enough to enable students to learn what they truly need.Table 2 depicts a concise representation of the students' attitudes.

Half of the students expressed a skeptical attitude,3 students expressed a negative attitude,2 students expressed an indifferent attitude,and only one student held a positive attitude,which happened to be the one who passed the graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs.

Table2.Students’ attitudes toward the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs

Based on the results of the questionnaire,the students who chose “No” in the answer of the fourth question in table 1 were same three people as those who expressed negative attitude in table 2.In the interviews,when it came to the existing curriculum,these three students all complained that the numerous and inane compulsory courses on finance didn't help at all and some unimportant optional courses took up too much time.Half of the students who expressed skeptical attitude claimed that even if the existing curriculum worked in the English test,it still had many shortcomings.And those two students who were indifferent to the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination asserted in frustration that the school would not change the decision,because they had reported the problems before but nothing was improved,and they could only study for the examination through remedial classes outside the school.However,the only one student who passed the examination and expressed positive attitude alleged that both English courses and finance courses improved the thinking ability in the personal interview,and the adjustments would be made by school in the future.

From table 2 and the follow-up interviews,in addition to the advantages and disadvantages of existing curriculum,the school's attitude towards students' suggestions and the efficiency of handling and solving problems should also be paid attention to.

Students' perceptions of the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination were divided into two parts,the advantages and disadvantages,which were condensed into key phrases.Table 3 presents the main points succinctly.In terms of advantages,one is the help of English test in the written exam,and the other is that of thinking ability in the personal interview.As to disadvantages,the first and second are the obstacles to the mathematics test and the subject test in the written exam,and the third is the lack of preparation time for the written exam due to unreasonable arrangement of existing curriculum.

Table3.Students’ perceptions of the effects of existing curriculum on their performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance program

The advantages and disadvantages of existing curriculum were clearly explored with three specific questions with“what and how”,and with the interviews,the causes were identified.

As for the advantages,the existing curriculum is helpful for English test and thinking ability in personal interview,because more than half courses are taught in English,and financial courses focus on the cultural differences between countries in business negotiations,which exercise the ability of two-way thinking.

As for the disadvantages,the existing curriculum is useless for mathematics test and the test of subject matter knowledge.Learning math is an inevitable requirement of business English,and it is also the will of most business English majors.Without mathematics course,students cannot be able to conduct data statistics and chart analysis,thus lacking the foundation of finance.And the financial courses,such as international trade,international settlement and international finance,are too superficial to learn much that really works.Furthermore,the excessive schedule of junior year courses leads to the lack of preparation time for the written exam.Videlicet,due to the unreasonable arrangement of existing curriculum,business English students have less time to fill more knowledge loopholes.

3.3 Business English majors' opinions on the shortcomings of existing curriculum and the follow-up solutions

In the telephone interviews,students were asked systematic questions and targeted questions.The solutions were determined by repeated discussion and deliberation with all students to make them more practical and convincing.Table 4 reports the main shortcomings and follow-up solutions.

Table4.Students’ opinions on the shortcomings of existing curriculum and the follow-up solutions

After supplementing to the disadvantages of table 3,three major shortcomings are listed.Firstly,the lack of mathematics course leads to the loss of mathematics foundation needed for the complete understanding of business knowledge,graduate school entrance examination and employment.Secondly,the knowledge relevant to the subject is too superficial and some unimportant courses take up plenty of time.Thirdly,the excessive schedule of junior year courses leads to less preparation time for graduate school entrance examination than students from other departments.

Solutions were finally settled by repeated discussion and deliberation with every student.Integrating basic mathematics into the existing courses can help digest the knowledge of all the courses and practice skillfully.For those students who are willing to study finance or plan to take the graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance program,advanced mathematics classes offered on weekends can help make up deficiency in a shorter time.And increasing teaching time in important courses for deep learning and reducing teaching time in unimportant courses are to train more practical and useful talents rather than machines with bits of theoretical knowledge.In the junior year,the number of courses should be similar to that of students of other departments,and the major courses originally arranged in the junior year can be put in the freshman and sophomore years,giving students more preparation time for graduate school entrance examination.

4.Conclusion

The scarcity of literature reviews and the limited research capacity have led to some weaknesses in the design of study.In the study,12 business English majors who enrolled in 2015 and have already taken the graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs this year were participants.However,there must be limitations in drawing conclusions from only one university.Future research can be carried out on the basis of more colleges and more students.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of business English curriculum on English majors' performance on graduate school entrance examination for admission into finance programs that had not received much attention in previous researches.It has shown the benefits from existing curriculum in English test and thinking ability in the personal interview and the disadvantages of mathematics test,the test of subject matter knowledge and preparation time for the written exam and provided the direction for school to adjust business English curriculum to make it more effective for all business English majors,especially students who take finance as their postgraduate research direction and cultivate more interdisciplinary and applied talents.

In order to take advantages of disadvantages and further increase the passing rate of the graduate school entrance examination and the employment satisfaction rate later,the decision-makers who formulate teaching plans should partly integrate basic mathematics on the original basis of English courses,offer advanced mathematics classes on weekends for students who are willing to study finance or plan to take the graduate school entrance examination for admission intofinance program,increase teaching time in important courses like international finance for deep learning,deepen the content of existing curriculum and reduce teaching time in unimportant courses.Besides,in the crucial junior year,the number of courses should be similar to that of students of other departments,and the major courses originally arranged in the junior year can be put in the freshman and sophomore years,giving students more preparation time for graduate school entrance examination.Additionally,the school's attitude towards public opinion and the efficiency of handling and solving problems should be improved.