A Study On The Application Of The Communicative Language Teaching Approach In Marine Engineering English Teaching And Learning

In order to meet the requirements of the continuous development of moderninternational shipping industry, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) carriedout an all-round revision of “Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeepingfor Seafarers1978”(STCW78) in1995, which has especially emphasized “thecommunication (i.e. foreign language competence) among the multinational crew”.Marine Engineering English (MEE) is the vacational language used by theengineering staff on board ocean-going vessels in dealing with the marine engineeringbusiness. The achievement of MEE teaching directly affects the quality anddevelopment of engineering officers.MEE is a branch of English for Special Purpose (ESP) and has the commoncharacteristics of General English (GE). The traditional MEE teaching approach inChina which is teacher-centered focuses on the grammar and textual explanation, butneglects the pactices of language application and communicative function. It goesagainst the development of students’ initiative and passion. Based on the requirementsof students’ career education, the writer took the Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) which originated in Britain in the1970s as the theoretical basis and carried outthe tests, classroom observation and questionnaires based on a term’s investigation ofthe two classes majoring in Marine Engineering at Qingdao Ocean Shipping MarinersCollege (QMC) in order to study whether the CLT approach can stimulate the interestof students and find out the organizational ways, matters needing attention and theright English classroom teaching model compared with the traditional approaches.The result shows that CLT is a feasible way to promote not only the language abilitybut the comprehensive profession ability as well. In this study, some reasonable suggestions are made, which are beneficial to a follow-up study.At present, the vacational education is flourishing. Then how to develop thecommunicative and serving function of English will be the research orientation.Through the detailed study and practical application of CLT, it demonstrates that CLToffers the valuable experience and is worthy of further study. The writer hopes that thethesis can contribute to arousing language teachers’ attention to CLT and constantlyattempting the new approaches of language teaching.