A Study On The Status Quo And Models Of Development For Business English Teachers In Higher Education In Shanxi Province

After China's entrance to WTO, its contacts with world increase by days. Especially, after the awarding of the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing and the World Expo 2010 to Shanghai, its needs to the business English personnel boost dramatically. Although Business English teaching practice in China has a history of about 50 years, it was merely taken as a training course for staffs or salesman of foreign trade companies at the initial stage. Up until 2007, the Ministry of Education has just approved the establishment of Business English BA Program, which marked Business English has become a complete and independent discipline in China's academic system.In contrast to the huge demand of Business English personnel, the huge expansion of enrollment in universities and the rapid increase of Business English teaching spots in number, Business English teachers at all levels are very scarce without any apparent increase in number in recent years. In addition, the make-up of Business English faculty in most universities is not well-structured, and the quality of them is also unsatisfactory.Although, the research on pre-service education and in-service training of EFL teacher has a long history, they all aimed to the field EFL teaching and were designed for EFL teachers, which lack a focus on a target group, as a result, lack efficiency for the guiding Business English teacher development. Therefore, it is no use relying on others to do the research on Business English teacher development; we should seek the way and models for professional development of ourselves with great passion.It is this reason that led to author's decision to conduct a qualitative study of Business English teachers of two universities and two vocational institutes in Shanxi province, on their perspectives of their professional development, their context, their knowledge and their teaching practice, combined with some preliminary data analysis.This study aims to promote our understanding of the status of Business English teachers in higher educational institutes and find the most demanding areas of knowledge and skills of Business English teachers with different background for their professional development.According to the survey of questionnaire and analysis of the different characteristics in the teacher professional growth, we roughly categorize the progress of Business English teacher professional development into six stages and detect the main routes and resources for professional development in each developing stages. On the basis of analyzing the strength and weakness of some in-service training programs, combined relevant literature at home and abroad, we tries to develop a comprehensive model for Business English teacher professional development, hoping to provide some inspiration and reference for Business English teaching and Business English teacher professional development.