Abstract
This chapter aims to explore non-English major undergraduates’ understandings of outcomes and problems in business English learning and teaching as well as their suggestions for curriculum adaptation and post-course practice upgrading at a Chinese university. The methodology includes questionnaires with six open-ended questions and participant observation with 147 non-English major undergraduates in one public university in the east of China. The results of the study show participants’ improvement in vocabulary learning and development in writing skills, business culture and knowledge, collaboration and negotiation skills and career potential. However, there are still problems in learning business vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar and general vocabulary due to language proficiency limitations. Communicative teaching approaches, such as group discussion and presentations, writing, reading, and translating activities are considered as useful activities. Videos, business simulations, and role plays are suggested for business English curriculum adaptation. Post-course practice should connect with workplaces with more communicative events. This study has significant implications for needs analysis research, business English teaching practice, and policy for both China and worldwide contexts.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to express heartfelt thanks to the participants for their helpful contributions to the study. The author is also grateful for the expert comments from editors and reviewers for revising this chapter. This work was funded by 2019 Jiangsu Higher Education Institution Philosophy and Social Science Research Project [2019SJA0776] and 9th China Foreign Language Education Research Fund [ZGWYJYJJ2018B14].
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Adapted from Dudley-Evans and St John (1998, p. 143), Lynch (1996, p. 135) and Mackay and Palmer (1981, p. 27)
Please list the outcomes of the course for you personally.
Describe an activity that you found to be useful and explain why.
What do you think should be added to the course you are taking now?
Your problems in this course (text and specific exercises) where especially related to: (please specify the difficulties within each category)
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(a)
Sentence structure________________________________________________
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(b)
Grammatical forms_______________________________________________
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(c)
The meaning of business vocabulary__________________________________
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(d)
The meaning of common English words_______________________________
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(e)
Others, please specify._____________________________________________
Which unit/exercise seemed challenging?
What would you suggest for follow-up to this course?
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Xie, Q. (2020). Business English Learning and Teaching and Curriculum Adaptation from Non-English Major Undergraduates’ Perspectives: The Case in a Chinese University. In: Sun, Y., Li, L., Cai, H. (eds) Asian Research on English for Specific Purposes. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1037-3_14
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