A Study of “Profession + Foreign Language” Based Curriculum Design of College English ()
1. Introduction
With the promotion of the national “Belt and Road” Initiative and the concept of “Community of Shared Future for Mankind”, the cultivation needs of outstanding talents of “profession + foreign language” are increasingly urgent. Zhejiang province is one of the most active provinces in China’s economy. On the premise of giving full play to the role of the state-owned economy, the development of the private economy has driven the economic take-off and formed a “Zhejiang Economy” with distinctive characteristics. It is steadily implementing and actively promoting the industry transformation and upgrading, accelerating the cultivation of innovative momentum, improving the quality and efficiency of economic development, and helping economic development, and all of the above mentioned can’t be separated from the cultivation of outstanding talents.
The employment rate of college graduates has can’t be neglected in economic development [1] and the great rejuvenation of China. How to expand the employment channel has become one of the priorities for universities and colleges when setting up the cultivation goals.
The demand for composite application-oriented talents in enterprises and society is becoming stronger. Compound application talents with “profession + foreign language” must not only have corresponding professional knowledge, such as computers, e-commerce, accounting, etc., but also have high foreign language application ability and proficiency, and a certain cross-cultural communication ability, therefore, it is imminent to build a university English curriculum system that cultivates “profession + foreign language” talents.
2. Research Values
Many English teachers are deficient in guiding students to use Internet resources, foreign language teaching, learning effect evaluation and teaching skills [2] , which has made the current study necessary in providing a guide in this field. Traditional pure language talents are mainly language skills, that is, English majors, or non-English majors. Only professional knowledge but no good foreign language proficiency can’t meet the needs of economic development. This subject intends to build a “profession + foreign language” talent training curriculum system. After preliminary pilot experiments and amendments, it is intended to be promoted within a certain range. It has certain theoretical value and taken national strategies into account to meet economic development. The needs of talents have certain practical value.
3. Research Background
In October 2020, the latest version of University English Teaching Guide (2020 edition) was released, which once again pointed out that the nature of university English curriculum must be instrumental and humanitarian. Its curriculum setting includes three categories: General English, English for Special Purposes, and Cross-cultural Communication. By reading the papers about college English course design in CNKI and talking with other researchers, it has been found that most institutions continue to take the traditional general English courses as the main option [3] . Courses, such as General English, English for Special Purposes, and Cross-cultural Communication are not distinguished and classified in curriculum design, so do corresponding class arrangements and teacher matching. In the actual teaching process, most teachers still use traditional teaching methods to focus on words and grammar in daily teaching, small tests, and final exams. It is unsatisfactory and it is difficult to meet my country’s demand for compound talents.
ESP (English for Special Purposes) refers to English related to some specific occupations or disciplines, which may include foreign trade English, news English, tourism English, financial English, marketing English, academic English, medical English, legal English, comprehensive reading, thesis writing, etc. [4] . The purpose is to cultivate students’ ability in the actual circumstance of communication. It can be seen that “profession + foreign language” is essentially English for Special Purposes. Relying on content in the textbook or materials within students’ profession or majors to conduct English teaching, such as combined with the relevant content of medical majors for English teaching, it can not only impart students professional knowledge, but also improve their English skills. CBI (Content-Based Instruction), is a teaching concept, which originated from the immersion program in Montreal, Canada in the 1960s, refers to a certain subject or a certain kind of subject or a certain kind. The theme content-based language teaching method is intended to combine the learning of language with the contents in students’ learning of their professions. The focus of language teaching is no longer to teach the language itself, but to obtain the target language ability through learning knowledge in the profession [5] .
4. Discussion
The “profession + foreign language” talent training model aims to cultivate the inter-disciplinary talents, focusing on cultivating the talents with foreign language basic skills and foreign language communication skills on the basis of the professional knowledge of the student’s profession, with the essence of cultivating students’ capability of carrying out the day-to-day jobs with their non-foreign language knowledge by the help of foreign languages. It emphasizes “profession” and “foreign languages”. The two complement each other, and organically combine language and content, attach importance to the main content of communication, and promote the cooperative development of the two, just like the teaching mode advocated by CBI. Therefore, this thesis is guided by content-based teaching concepts, trying to build a talent training course system for “profession + foreign language”, which is in line with the government’s blueprint of the need of inter-disciplinary talents who have the qualities of knowing the state policies, nation conditions, global perspectives, high language proficiency, etc.
We will implement a two-year “profession + foreign language” teaching program for undergraduate students in our university’s 2023 level (including 4 semesters). The specific implementation process is to continuously improve teaching design and enhance teaching effectiveness by observing the implementation effect of “profession + foreign language”.
4.1. Teaching Content
“Profession + foreign language” teaching mode is based on professional knowledge and integrates language elements in teaching. Language teachers may lack knowledge of some disciplines such as electronic engineering, civil engineering, and logistics engineering such as electronic engineering, civil engineering, and logistics engineering, and they will be limited to teach and guide students to know and grasp deep-seated content. At the same time, the existing textbooks cannot meet the different language levels and personalized needs of students. Therefore, in terms of teaching content, the research team of this subject will form three groups to facing the software engineering major, logistics engineering majors and health care majors. By considering the level of English, professional courses and other specific situations, the research team of the present study will respectively select some of the contents of existing textbooks for systematic construction and organic integration of existing resources. Based on the latest professional knowledge, the latest research results, and the development of the latest situation, the appropriate English reading and listening materials are selected as supplementary materials to guide students to read and practice.
By conducting research on stakeholders, the needs of enterprises and industries for graduates’ “profession + foreign language” abilities could be understood and grasped. At the same time, the teaching could also include conducting interviews and questionnaire surveys with teachers and students, collecting data, analyzing the problems and challenges in the implementation of college English “profession + foreign language” teaching, and continuously improving based on feedback results, all of which are balancing each other.
4.2. Teaching Methodology
Classroom teaching is a practical operation of the “profession + foreign language” teaching model, which is the specific implementation of teaching content and related to the effectiveness of the “profession + foreign language” teaching model. Wen Qiufang has pointed that to systemically implement the reform, the key lies in teachers’ notion, language proficiency, and pedagogical capabilities [6] .
This project aims to combine students’ English proficiency with different majors, and implement graded teaching based on their actual English proficiency, explore teaching ideas, and diversify classroom forms, in order to stimulate students’ interest in learning, encourage them to think more, and use English as a tool to solve problems in the established context of the teaching content they have learned, consolidating and deepening their mastery of professional knowledge.
Timely invite teachers from computer and medical majors to enter English classrooms and share teaching tasks with English teachers. Classroom design is diversified, gradually advancing from easy to difficult, from few to many, and from simple to complex, deepening students’ mastery and understanding of professional content, and improving language comprehension and application abilities. During the teaching process, teachers should make teaching adjustments based on the actual situation. If the content is difficult, it can be converted to Chinese for teaching. Chinese should be adopted to share the key and difficult points to make students fully understand, and English should be adopted to guide students to stimulate their learning interest and classroom participation, all of which might be helpful to achieve that students are the “main” and teachers are the “auxiliary” in classroom teaching.
4.3. Course Assessment and Evaluation
Curriculum assessment cannot be ignored, as different assessment methods have a direct impact on teachers’ teaching and students’ learning. The current curriculum for the preliminary English courses mostly adopts the exam that combines subjective and objective questions such as listening, reading, writing, and translation, continuing the exam type in the basic education stage. Although it can to some extent supervise students’ learning, and also a mature system for measuring learning effectiveness, in practical teaching, it is quite obvious that the phenomena such as academic fatigue, “taking exams for the sake of exams”, and pre-exam raids among college students are obvious. The reason may vary: whether the course content has timeliness, whether the difficulty is appropriate, and whether it adapts to students’ learning foundation are all factors worth considering, and the course assessment method is also an important link that cannot be ignored.
5. Conclusions
The paper aims to implement a step-by-step assessment method for the two academic years and four semesters of college English courses, from easy to difficult, from few to many, from simple to complex, including but not limited to English papers, oral defense and presentation, project assignments, traditional open or closed book exams, and other forms. In addition, adjusting the ratio of regular and final grades, and actively introducing peer evaluation, inter-group evaluation, and other evaluation methods are all worth considering and trying.
“Professional + foreign language” teaching mode is a form of innovative teaching form. It is a systematic teaching mode that integrates professional courses and foreign language elements to form an organic curriculum teaching mode, including teaching outlines, teaching content, teaching methods, assessment methods, etc. [7] . This topic is guided by content -based teaching concepts. It intends to build a talent training curriculum system for “profession + foreign language”, including teaching goals, teaching content, teaching methods and means, teaching quality management and evaluation, and teacher training. Through a large number of questionnaires, corporate visits, and student interviews with non-English graduates in the early stage, it is beneficial for understanding the students’ learning dynamics, learning needs, and the latest talent needs, etc., exploring how to truly integrate “profession + foreign languages” into university English teaching in university English teaching, and putting the design into practice. Students of different majors and language levels are guided by the consideration of students’ language proficiency in teaching. This topic is based on exploring the “profession + foreign language” talent training model as the main goal. It clarifies curriculum settings, teaching models, evaluations and improvement of teaching materials development, teacher training, and incentive measures. For the limit of time, the current study is more of a qualitative one and curriculum design, the large-scale survey, like questionnaires and interviews, could be done to obtain data for empirical study. And for the future study, the research could be furthered from the perspective of comparative study.