Atentative Study Of ESP Curriculum For English Majors

Nowadays, the development of Chinese society has posed both challenges andopportunities for the cultivation of English majors in universities. Under this circumstance,the National Teaching Syllabus for English Major in University (2000) puts forward therequirement of cultivating compound English talents, which provides policy foundation forestablishing ESP courses for English majors. Thus ESP is becoming a hot field in the study ofthe curriculum reform of English majors.This paper aims to have a tentative study of the ESP curriculum for English majors tofind out some existing problems in the respects of ESP materials, ESP teaching, ESP teachersand ESP tests etc. and then some strategies and enlightenment are presented to improve theESP curriculum for English majors.The focus of this paper is a case study of ESP curriculum in China University ofPetroleum (East China)(CUP), which is a comprehensive university with science-technologyorientation. Generally speaking, comprehensive universities have their own features andadvantages in ESP curriculum for English majors. And this survey is designed to find out thestatus quo of ESP curriculum through the methods of questionnaires, classroom observationand interviews. The survey results show that the ESP courses are welcomed by most of theEnglish majors, esp. the EBE courses and some other findings about the EBE and ESTcourses are discussed form the perspectives of the materials, methodology and tests. What’smore, some corresponding suggestions and strategies are proposed.This paper is just a tentative study in a smaller scale and it is expected that this study canbe helpful in optimizing ESP curriculum in this university and provide useful implications forother universities, in particular the comprehensive universities. Due to the limitations in thisstudy, further relevant studies are needed to have a deeper analysis and discussion.