Designing Business English Teaching Materials For College Students

With China's entry into the WTO and the increasing global economic integration, Business English has become the fastest growing branch of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) in China. It has become a hot course in colleges. However, there is an increasing concern about the quality of teaching materials of Business English for college students, as too little research is available to underpin materials design of Business English. Based on a general survey of Business English, this dissertation, in the first instance, makes a careful analysis of the existing problems of traditional teaching materials of Business English and discusses the traditional approaches to materials design underlying these problems, i.e. a language-centred approach and a skill-centred approach to materials design. On the basis of the ESP theory, Hutchinson's theoretical principles of learning (1988), theory of motivation as well as humanistic psychology, this dissertation puts forward a learning-centred approach to teaching materials design in Business English and defines objectives for the materials design. Meanwhile, sample materials of Business English are provided after Hutchinson and Waters' materials designmodel (1987). The designing of such materials aims to improve the traditional classroom management in Business English classroom and to greatly benefit the cultivation of versatile business talents. Moreover, it aims to bring the theoretical research to the practice at the classroom level by integrating the samples with classroom activities in real situation. However, designing Business English materials is not an easy job because of complexity of the learning process and other factors This dissertation is also the author's first attempt to invite interested scholars to come up with their professional solutions to the problems discussed in the dissertation.