A Study On Professional Ability-oriented Secretary English Teaching In Higher Vocational College

The Ministry of Education has issued many documents stating the importance offurther development of the higher vocational education. Therefore, the higher vocationalschools are expanding their instructional scales as well as promoting the educationalqualities by doing some social investigations. Whatever they do is to improve theintellectual cultivation mode, shorten the distance between the graduates’ actual abilitiesand the requirements stated by the companies and lay a good foundation for students’ jobhunting. Nowadays the teaching quality is not decided by the students’ scores, but by theirprofessional knowledge and competencies. With the development of economy and therequirement of reality, secretary English has become the elective or compulsory course inthe higher vocational college, which on one hand enhances its position, on the other handchallenges textbook writers and teachers. Therefore, based on the author’s teachingexperience, this study is intended to find an effective way to teach this course so as toimprove students’ competencies.Competency-based Education, Constructivism and English for Specific Purposes arethe theoretical basis for this study.In this study, the author designed two questionnaires to get the information about therequirements stated by the companies and the students’ present English level as well astheir anticipation to this course. Thus, the author can design the class teaching based on thedata from the two questionnaires. After nearly one year’s teaching, the author designedanother questionnaire for the same students to get the information about the students’learning results and their comments on this course, so that the author can analyze the keyfactors that influence the cultivation of students’ professional abilities.As a result, the last questionnaire shows that the students give a positive attitude to theauthor’s teaching and accept the author’s teaching approach. More importantly, from thestudy, the author has found that:(1) the teacher should never think that students’performance in the class is a waste of time;(2) the teacher should never underestimate thestudents, because they can finish the assignments unexpectedly good and can thread whatthey have learned.