Study On Current Situation And Strategies Of Legal English Teaching In Colleges

The judiciary put forward the school mission of training high level, integrated and extravert legal talents, which was the first time to raise new teaching requirements for quality education and skills of law. In order to comply with the development of times and follow the national teaching policy, many universities have proceeded the teaching reform of legal English and some colleges have established legal English courses. But there are many problems in teaching legal English, such as single teaching model, outmoded teaching methods, various teaching materials and so on.This paper discusses these problems in teaching legal English and provides some relevant suggestions and strategies by doing questionnaire, interview and classroom observation in juris masters from Chongqing University and Southwest University of Political Science & Law.The results demonstrate some problems in teaching legal English in universities of Chongqing: Firstly, students’ different English levels make it hard for teachers to choose appropriate teaching models; Then the teaching models in operation cannot satisfy students’ learning needs to a large extent; And a single teaching model reduces students’ learning interest and teaching effect; Lastly, administrators pay less attention to the teaching of legal English, like arranging fewer class hours and lack of teachers and teaching materials; 5.the teachers’ knowledge structure is imperfect because it is hard for them to guarantee the high level of English while mastering the all-sided knowledge of law.There are some immanent and external causes to these problems. Immanent causes include: the different students English levels and the students’ lack of self-learning; English teachers have basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating but they lack sort of systematic legal knowledge. Meanwhile, law teachers hold comprehensive legal knowledge but they lack specialized training of English and have relatively low level of English. External causes include: firstly, arranging fewer class hours. In some colleges the courses of legal English only have 32 or 34 hours even less. Then many colleges choose different textbooks and it’s harder for them to option teaching content and teaching model. Once again, administrators pay less attention to the training of legal teacher. Lastly, teaching objectives are equivocal with shortage of normative evaluation system.According to the survey result, this paper presents some suggestions: First of all, a logical and operable teaching objective and evaluation system should be well designed; Then more teacher training should be put into practice while teachers try to enhance their professional ability by learning comprehensive knowledge; And colleges and education departments should compile a suit of textbooks which meet the need of teaching objectives by learning domestic and overseas legal textbooks; Legal English teaching models should be reformed and improved. At the same time, teachers should learn new teaching ideas and knowledge continuously and try to put theory in practice. Besides, they also need to choose different teaching model according to different teaching demands and teaching objectives to avoid single teaching model.