Thinking On The Establishment Of A Communicative Testing And Teachning Model For Maritime English

To meet the requirements of the rapid expanding and fast growing of modern shipping enterprise, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has advocated to regard the training of seafarers with strong English communicative competence as the focus of Maritime English teaching. And accordingly it has put forward clear and definite requirements and standards. The world Maritime English teaching is just shifting from traditional teaching methodology to communicative language teaching. The Maritime English certificate testing and evaluation held twice yearly by National Maritime Superintendence Administration has played an important part in promoting the English proficiency of Chinese seafarers. But how about its efficiency in testing the seafarers' communicative language proficiency and what kind backwash will it has on the teaching of Maritime English? This thesis analyzes the relationship between language testing and language teaching and the status quo of China's Maritime English testing and teaching. On this basis, using the theory of communicative language testing , the paper analyzes the reliability and validity of the existing system from the perspective of both theory and practice. In the end, the papier tentatively puts forward a communicative model for the testing , evaluation and teaching of Maritime English.This thesis consists of seven parts.Introduction part introduces the purpose and the significance of this study.Chapter one and chapter two present the relevant theories . Chapter one briefly reviews the history of English language testing and analyzes the uses and approaches of testing , the basic quality of testing and the relationship between language testing and language teaching. It also introduces ways of validating a test. Based on the relationship between the testing and teaching, in order to reflect a certain teaching approach, a certain test is to be developed. Thus, a communicative test is needed to assess candidates' communicative competence. Whether a test truly reflects the students' communicative competence mainly depends on the validity of the test. A test with high validity can also bring beneficial backwash on teaching. The second chapter briefly introduces the theoretical foundations of communicative testing Following this, the basic characteristics of communicative language testing and the characteristics of language proficiency are analyzed .In addition ,the respective definitions of the term ' Competence' by Chomsky, H ymes, Canal e and Swain and Bachman are also included in this chapter.Chapter three, chapter four and chapter five are the main body of this thesis. Chapter three briefly introduces the definition and development of ESP and its learner-centered material designing as well as the learners' needs analysis. It points out that, as a branch of ESP and a highly socialized language with rich cultural content , Maritime English must adopt the communicative language testing and teaching. Based on the above analysis and brief introduction of the world Maritime English teaching and Chinese Maritime English testing and evaluation system, this part , by combining with the English proficiency requirement for the seafarers in the STCW 78/95 , has a careful and detailed analysis theoretically and empirically about the present testing and evaluation system from the perspective of communicative language testing. It notes that the existing testing and evaluation system must be reformed as it can not reflect the candidates' English communicative proficiency from the perspective of face validity, construct validity and content validity. Chapter four puts forward a tentative communicative model for the testing ,evaluation and teaching of Maritime English on the basis of the theoretical analysis. And this chapter also tentatively analyzes the specific operation of such a model in Maritime English testing, evaluation and teaching. It notes that communicative language testing and teaching is feasible as current teaching instrument and teaching staff both provide advantageous con...