English Language Teaching Materials Development For Higher Vocational And Technical Education In China

The Basic Requirements for HVTE English Course issued in the year of 2000 calls for the new situation of English learning. HVTE English with a comprehensive coverage of speaking, listening, reading, writing and translating skills, aiming at improving students' language use ability, comes into being. The present paper, attempting to develop new materials to be compatible with the syllabus, is a pioneer work produced as the reaction toward the situation.After an analysis of the Basic Requirements for HVTE English Course, this paper adopts a topic syllabus. The national syllabus is approached from a multi-strand angle in order to be maximally comprehensive and helpful to teachers and learners. The Communicative Area Form in the appendix I provides various topic areas concerned with different language skills. Therefore, the topic syllabus based on context is particularly suitable for HVTE English course which aims at overall proficiency and does stress the importance of communicative competence.In defining their purpose, the paper outlines the principles of ELT materials development for HVTE English Course concerning communicative methodology, integrated skills, authentic input, exercise design, learner autonomy and grading and sequencing. First of all, the role of HVTE English materials within a communicative methodology should be specified and it is necessary to point out what the salient features of communicative methodology might be in the context of English teaching and learning at this level of the HVTE education system in China Secondly, the paper lists the advantages of skills integration and introduces the ways to realize skills integration. In addition, because the successful communication consists of meaningful message apart from appropriate skills, the integration of content and skills appears significant. Thirdly, the paper explains the importance ofauthentic input by pointing out that materials from real world situations which the learner must face can best promise successful transfer of language use and communication skills when the learner finishes the course. However, it seems clear that authenticity of HVTE English materials in China concerns itself with a set of parameters that vary with the situation and the learner. Some eclectic methods are provided to solve the problem. And then the issue of exercise design is discussed. Various examples are cited to illustrate how to design different types of exercise: speaking, listening, reading, writing and translating and integrated skills activities. The paper also draws attention to the seemingly inconspicuous part, learner autonomy, and the means of developing learner autonomy are discussed. At last, six criteria are presented for reference for possible ways of sequencing and grading.Besides, the results from an evaluation of commercial materials in use provide other useful reference. The evaluation proves that foreign textbook has evident advantages in the aspects of exercise design, integration of skills, grading and sequencing, etc. it has also been found that, a lot can be drawn upon from home materials, in particular in their treatment of translating skill. The gap between the specifications set by the syllabus and what are available justifies the significance of developing new materials.Drawing upon the two sources-taking into account the theoretical principles outlined and making reference to the evaluation to integrate the merits of books at home and abroad, the paper has proposed a new materials building model which consists of four elements: input, content focus, language focus, task and output. The successful accomplishment of the sample unit demonstrates the feasibility and application of the model.