An Experimental Study Of Business English Teaching Based On CBI

With the acceleration of China’s accession to the WTO and the process of economic globalization,China urgently needs inter-disciplinary talents who are adept at both foreign language and professional knowledge.Therefore,the ability to use business English skillfully and accurately with foreigners in economic and trade activities has become the demand of many English learners and the needs of social development.CBI(content-based instruction),as a member of ESP,which combines subject content with second language and subject content is used as a medium for second language teaching to achieve the improvement of language and subject knowledge,has become a hot research in recent years.However,most of the researches of CBI focus on the theory of CBI and the application of CBI to all kinds of subjects to different levels of student groups.There are few empirical studies on CBI applied to Business English at the university level.The research is designed in quantitative way.Two classes of participants on the first-level was selected by the Heilongjiang University Freshmen Admission Test.Then the pre-test is taken to confirm the two classes are with the same Business English level.The purpose of the thesis is to solve two research questions:compare with CBI and traditional teaching approach(1)which teaching method would have more impact on the students’ language achievement of Business English usage and on which aspects?(2)which teaching method would have a positive influence on students’ business qualities such as generalization in business,business thinking,cross-cultural awareness,business practice ability,teamwork ability,communication ability and other improvements?After a 17-week study,it is found that the language achievement of Business English usage with CBI is slightly higher than that with traditional teaching approach by the results of pre-test and post-test;but the result of questionnaire shows that the Business qualities of the students in CBI class,which involves business thinking,the ability of problem-solving,communicative competence and team work,improves dramatically.So are the effect of class education,the interests and the motivation,especially the Students’practical ability in authentic Business settings,which prove the application of content-based instruction in business English teaching is feasible and effective.The results of this study enrich the empirical research on the application of CBI in college business English teaching,and provide a new approach for college business English teaching,at the same time it provides a reference for the application of CBI to the teaching of other subjects.