A Survey Of The Status Quo Of Mechanical Engineering English For Undergraduate Students In Chongqing

With economic globalization quickening its step, more and more international exchanges have emerged between China and the other countries in the world. English has become the most popular language in communication. In this process, the needs for the talented persons have also changed. English is closely related with their specialized field and job occupation.The Mechanical Engineering English (MEE) is a branch of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), which is an indispensable tool of the technical exchange in the world. A good grasp of the specialized English is the requisite ability of the engineering technical personnel. Chongqing is one of the six industrial bases and one of the ten equipment manufacturing industries in China. Thus, the city of Chongqing requires many Mechanical Engineering talents. Based on this situation, this paper takes the teaching of ESP for mechanical engineering students as the focus of the study, and analyzes the Status Quo of MEE in this area. The research goal is to facilitate the development of the ESP teaching, and make the course of MEE teaching, a branch of ESP, become better and more effective in practice. The writer found some of the disadvantages of the education, and then proceeded to offer some countermeasures about the improvement of the ESP teaching for universities in Chongqing.The writer chose three universities that have MEE course as the subject of the study. The questionnaires were distributed to 17 MEE teachers and 150 junior students. And the writer did the class observation of each university for eight periods of the lessons. In addition, as a supplementary of the questionnaire, a follow-up interview to the teachers was adopted.The research findings indicate that the current situation of the MEE teaching to the undergraduate students has a lot of room for improvement. The main problems found in the investigation are listed as follows: the students do not have interest in the course and the class seems to be lifeless; each of three universities has its own choice of the material without an authoritative and unified course book for the students; the content of textbooks is out of date, which makes it impossible for students to contact the latest techniques and information in their field; the compilation of the text is not systemic and consistent enough; the media and methods of teaching are unitary; the theory can not link with practice; the students can not acquire other skills besides translation. In the end, the writer gave some suggestions and countermeasures towards the existing problems hoping to provide some useful insights to improving the teaching of MEE.