The relationship between attitudes and achievements in English integrated business courses

An important educational goal of the Ministry of Education and the departments of applied foreign language in institutes and universities of technology in Taiwan was to implement English integrated business courses. The purpose was to prepare students for basic and general foreign language knowledge, to acquaint them with practical business knowledge applicable in a foreign market, and to provide them with technology application skills across multiple languages. However, a national concern was that not all the teachers in the departments were willing to teach the courses. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether or not there was a relationship between teachers' attitudes toward the integration of English in their course offerings in the departments of applied foreign language teachers and their students' achievements.; This research did not find an experimentally important predictability regarding teachers' attitudes toward English integrated business courses and their students' achievement in these courses. However, both teachers and students had a strong support for integrating English into their business courses. The teachers strongly supported more professional development designed to assist them with their ability to teach these courses. Most teachers acknowledged these courses consumed more time for preparation, but the concern regarding their implementation was not directed at having to do more work as much as it was for not having proper preparation and/or ongoing professional development. A second concern with the integrated courses regarded the issue of increasing English fluency at the expense of academic content. Students, while supportive of the integrated coursework, were primarily concerned about the applicability of this coursework to their future employment. This research concludes with the observation that the Ministry of Education could greatly capitalize on its investment in English integrated courses throughout higher education by making a much smaller but highly important investment into appropriate ongoing, high quality professional development.