The Study On Application Of ESP Discursive Competence In College English

In recent years, college English has been developed prosperously, and the Englisheducation in primary school and middle school has made great progress, however,college English could hardly meet students’ needs any more. English for GeneralPurposes (EGP) has been the main content of English teaching and learning in most ofthe colleges. But there have been a lot of problems, one of which is the disconnection ofcollege English with the primary and middle school English education.刘润清(2010)states that “the English level of middle school students has been improved, so EGP incollege could not get on”. Generally speaking, some college students do not takeEnglish seriously, and he predicts that in several years, ESP would be the careerdevelopment trend of college English teachers, and the college English reform isinevitable.This study is going to clarify the specific needs of the students for English learningand to certify why the current English course could not meet the students’ needs, basedon Bhatia’s (2004) idea about the ESP discursive competence in which he believes thatthree levels of discursive competence should be considered: textual competence, genrecompetence, and social competence. By applying the analysis model of discursivecompetence and analyzing students’ needs in professional context, the discursivecompetence students should acquire in English learning has been specified. Meanwhile,the discursive competencies in a series of textbooks have been analyzed so as to givesome implications on that whether ESP courses could meet their needs in deed. Thisstudy has conducted a five likert scale questionnaire and a semi-structured interview for79employees from foreign invested companies in Chongqing and Chengdu area,located in the southwest of China, and this study also selected6ESP textbooksrandomly and systemically from a series of ESP textbooks published by high educationpress.The study shows that,1. Three levels of discursive competencies are highlyrequired by the graduates. The textual competence is an important one among thethree(mean score=4.07, SD=0.90), because it is the basic ability, and any forms of othercompetencies are based on the good knowledge of vocabulary, the basic sentencepatterns as well as the complex ones, and some pragmatics. Social competencies areimportant too (mean score=4.15, SD=0.90), because students think that it is important to express their social identity through language. In the process of working aftergraduation, they will encounter a diversity of genres, so it is crucial to be skillful inreading and writing those genres. Discursive competence is needed by the students, so itis significant to discuss English teaching in universities by the standard of discursivecompetence.2. The textual competence is the foundation and premise of the other twocompetencies. Three aspects of textual competence have been analyzed, professionalwords, sentence structures and translation skills, among which professional words aretaken as the most important one (mean score=4.27, SD=0.88) by the students, and thentranslation skills(mean score=4.22, SD=0.76), and the final one is sentencepatterns(mean score=3.73, SD=0.97).3. In generic competences, genres in reading and writing forms (mean score=4.24)are more highly required by the students than that in listening and speaking forms(mean score=3.95). In China, English is used as a foreign language, even in the foreigninvested companies. Common staffs speak Chinese when they communicate with eachother, only for emails, relevant documents and in-house magazines; they use English inreading and writing.4. In social competence, graduates believe that the abilities to communicate withthe specialists of human resources and to express the social identity as interviewees arevery important (mean score=4.40, SD=0.81). Then the competence as HumanRecourses (HR) to express the business concept of companies is also taken as animportant one (mean score=4.28, SD=0.87).This study is trying to specify students’ needs for English and to certify whetherESP course can meet students’ needs through clarifying discursive competence, so as toprovide another perspective for the policy of mainland college English course reform.