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Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
With the rapid development of economic globalization and international business activities, the Chinese society demands for inter-disciplinary talents who possess both sound English skills and specialized business knowledge.To satisfy the need,Business English(BE)major or BE-related courses have been set in many universities and colleges in China,including the vocational colleges.
According to the report of the 17th CPC(Communist Party of China)National Congress(2007),we should optimize the Educational structure,promote balanced development of compulsory education,move faster toward universal access to senior secondary education, vigorously develop vocational education,and improve the quality of higher education.Increasing attention is being drawn to vocational and technical education,which has become a part of great importance in Chinese higher education system.According to Yuan(2006:1),up until 2004,the number of colleges and universities offering Business English subjects has increased to more than 400 in China.
Among those courses concerning BE,BE reading is an essential part of BE curriculum system.Carrel(1989)asserted that reading,as one of the integrated skills,is by far the most important of the four skills in the foreign language.Ellis and Johnson(2002)mentioned that BE teaching should place a greater emphasis on training the skill of communication in English reading.For a long time,reading has been viewed as one of the basic means of acquiring information and knowledge.And BE reading is also acknowledged as a basic and crucial approach for BE and business knowledge acquisition.However,both teachers and students in vocational colleges are confronted with many problems.The major ones are summed up as follows:
1.Teachers
(1)Teaching without scientific reading teaching theories:
Due to the effect of the general tendency in teaching General English(GE)reading,which is laying more stress on grammar and syntax analysis than on the connotation of the reading passages and the training of the reading skills and ability,currently BE reading teaching in vocational colleges is normally characterized as teacher-centered,grammar-word based and exercised-oriented(Wu Yaqin,2009:13).Teachers spend a lot of time explaining words, analyzing complex sentence structures or doing translation exercises.A lot of emphasis is given to knowledge,theory or explanation,with little attention given to reading skills or practice. Because of this,in various exams students do better in the questions which directly come from the literal meaning of the material than the inferential ones.It reflects their poor reading comprehensive competence.
(2)Teaching without paying enough attention to after-class reading:
After-class reading plays a key role in the whole process of BE reading teaching. Apparently,classroom is not the only place to cultivate students to learn BE knowledge. After-class activities are equally important and should be well arranged.
(3)Teaching without suitable textbooks:
Although there are a great variety of BE reading textbooks,it is still very difficult to select the most suitable one.Compared with foreign textbooks,domestic ones are rather out-of-date, not only in contents,but also in editing patterns.BE reading textbooks in China mainly ad本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。