A Study On Ocean-going Seafarers’ English Competency Assessment Textbooks

With the surging demand of high-quality seafarers in China’s progress into shipping power, ME teaching has drawn more attention than ever. Study Guide for Ocean-going Seafarers English Competency Assessment is a textbook series that function as the authority listening and speaking textbooks for students in Navigation Technology and Marine Engineering majors, which has been revised three times so as to comply with the updating language requirements of STCW and domestic standards.The STCW Manila Amendments reflect the higher standards to be met in Maritime English Training in general and in Maritime English communication competency which in particular has been referred eighteen times in the Amendments. Therefore, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is adopted with an aim to evaluate SGOSECA from the perspective of cultivating effective communication competency via questionnaires and interviews.The results of the analysis indicate that the content in SGOSECA generally conforms to the language requirements in STCW, listening and speaking requirements in particular while the teaching approaches differ from those in IMO Model Course which attaches more attention to communicative teaching approaches and progressive learning methods. According to the students’evaluation, the comprehensive difficulty level of SGOSECA is a little high while the content of conversation is comparatively more difficult than that of listening. There are several aspects that fail to satisfy the students; the purposes are far too exam-oriented and most of the materials are out of date and less motivating and interesting in types. In addition, there are a number of terminologies without explanation as well as audio materials without background noise. Suggestions and implication are finally proposed for the coming edition of SGOSECA and further for ME teaching.