On The Application Of Content-Based Instruction To Pharmaceutical English Teaching In Secondary Vocational Schools

With globalization and China’s entry into the WTO in the21stcentury，there is an increasing demand in the job market for talents whoare professional at work and proficient in English. It is, therefore, ofparamount importance to train students to be successful job applicants,which presents both new challenges and opportunities for certain levelsof education including the secondary vocational education.Apparently the traditional English teaching method needs to bereformed and ESP course design must meet the requirements of oursociety.Content-Based Instruction (hereafter CBI) is comparable to Englishfor Specific Purposes (ESP). It is an approach in language educationthat provides second language students with instructions on bothprofessional content and target language so it can meet the dualrequirement of students’ employment and professional development.Besides, students in secondary vocational schools have little interest instudying and are poor at English. The CBI approach can motivate thestudents by encouraging them to explore interesting content and toengage in appropriate language activities at the same time. As CBIopens up the further possibility of adapting English teaching insecondary vocational education to new environments, the authorcarried out an empirical study of the application of CBI in teachingpharmaceutical English.This thesis consists of the following parts: The first chapter gives abrief introduction of pharmaceutical English and ESP as well as therelationship between them and then points out the necessity ofapplying CBI to pharmaceutical English teaching after a detailedanalysis of the current situation of teaching in secondary vocationalschools. The second chapter provides a general overview of CBI and its theoretical basis such as Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, cognitive linguistics,constructivism, and communicative language teaching. In the thirdchapter, the author compares the traditional approach with thelearner-centered CBI approach to teach pharmaceutical English, andillustrate ways to implement the new approach. To test the effects ofCBI, she also conducted and reported a pedagogical experiment inthe fourth chapter, validating the proposal to a large extent. The fifthchapter mentions four problems related to the application of CBI topharmaceutical English teaching, and then gives correspondingsuggestions so as to improve the effectiveness of CBI. Finally, this thesisexplores the prospects of CBI in teaching pharmaceutical English insecondary vocational schools.