The Application Of ESP Theory In Vocational Colleges Shipbuilding Professional English Teaching

In recent years, shipbuilding industry has become increasingly important in Chinese industry structure. Meanwhile, the quality of its employees has become an important factor directly related to the development of it. Higher vocational colleges have been taking an important mission to develop employees in this field. Many of them have offered Shipbuilding Professional English and regard it as a main course for the students who major in shipbuilding. Its teaching quality determines the level of the future quality of employees in this industry. As a shipbuilding English teacher, the author is particularly concerned about the development of shipbuilding Professional English teaching in higher vocational colleges. This study is a trial to apply the ESP (English for Special Purposes) theory to shipbuilding Professional English teaching in higher vocational colleges which is totally different from general academic English teaching. The objective of shipbuilding professional English is to cultivate practical talent, so it is career-oriented, and application, practicality is the main features of it. However, from the choice of teaching materials, content of the course, teaching methods to course evaluation, shipbuilding Professional English has followed the university EGP (English for General Purposes) teaching mode, and the teaching effect is not ideal at all. ESP, a language teaching approach, can enable learners to gain a high level of competence in English in a very limited time. And its contents and methods are determined by the practical English requirement of learners. Not only is ESP in agreement with the aim of higher vocational education, but it is line with the objective of shipbuilding industry for English language communication talents. Therefore, it is reasonable to apply ESP approach to shipbuilding Professional English teaching, and it also can let the students to obtain English application competency required in the future work in the limited time. To improve the teaching quality of shipbuilding professional English, The author attempted to study the practicability, advantages and practicality of applying ESP approach to it by a quasi-experiment, a survey and an interview. During the research, an experimental group and a control group were adopted. In the experimental group, the ESP approach was applied; while in the control group, the EGP approach was employed. By comparing the data obtained from the two groups, a result has been gotten that students in the experimental group have made greater progress than those of the control one. The conclusion of this thesis mainly came from the comparison of the marks and performances of the students from these two groups. In terms of language ability and vocational competence, students in the experimental group also performed better than those in the control one. In view of the results got from the research, some practical suggestions for improving shipbuilding Professional English teaching have been offered. At the end of the thesis, the limitations of the current study have been pointed out, and the inspiration for further teaching has also been suggested.