A Study Of Application Of Content-Based Instruction To The Teaching Of Business English Reading Course At Higher Vocational College

This study was undertaken to investigate the application of Content-based Instruction (CBI) approach to Business English (BE) reading course in terms of four aspects:the BE majors’acceptability to CBI approach, its effectiveness in increasing BE majors’confidence, its effectiveness in enlarging BE majors’knowledge, and its effectiveness in improving BE majors’learning strategies. The theories on which this study is based are Input Hypothesis, Cognitive Learning Theory and Schema Theory. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into CBI so as to improve the teaching of BE reading course.Two research designs were involved in this study. One was experiment and the other was interview. With regard to the experiment, the participants were41BE sophomores at School of Foreign Languages, Yangzhou Polytechnic College (YZPC) and a BE teacher who taught BE reading for more than7years and tried to equip him with theoretical knowledge about CBI approach. The instrument employed in this study was a self-designed questionnaire with particular reference to Wang’s (2000) questionnaire on Length Approach to Writing, which touched upon four aspects:the acceptability to CBI approach to BE majors, its effectiveness in increasing BE majors’ confidence, its effectiveness in increasing BE majors’knowledge, and its effectiveness in improving BE majors’learning strategies. The treatment in this experiment involved five stages:specifying-teaching-objectives stage, pre-reading stage, while-reading stage, post-reading stage and assessment stage. The data were collected from the questionnaire and analyzed in terms of frequency and percentage. With regard to the interview,6subjects were chosen from the BE class based on their class participation. Two of them were most active, labeled as A and B; another two were moderately active, labeled as C and D; the other two were least active labeled as E and F. The interview schedule was concerned with the four aspects corresponding to the questionnaire. The data were collected by the researcher and data analysis involved categorization and comparison.This study has generated four major findings.Firstly, CBI approach to BE reading course is accepted by a vast majority of BE majors at higher vocational college, with the idea accounting for92.69%; the content, for90.44%; and the form, for82.92%. This may be due to three reasons. The first one is that the CBI in terms of the idea is career-field oriented, flexible and fairly new to them. The second one is that the CBI in terms of the content is integrative, relevant and comprehensible. The third one is that the CBI in terms of the form is reinforcing, complementary and communicative.Secondly, Most of the BE majors think CBI approach is quite helpful in increasing their confidence, with independent learning making up75.61%; active participation,75.61%; anxiety reduction,70.73%. This may be attributed to two factors. One is the teacher’s warm encouragement in class, like admiring eye contact, knowing nod, friendly smile and appreciating words, which helps to promote their confidence in discussing and airing their opinions in class. The other is their whole process involvement in preparation, discussion and presentation, which to a certain extent, gives them a sense of accomplishment and results in their confidence enhancement.Thirdly, most BE majors think that CBI approach is effective in increasing their knowledge in four aspects, with increasing BE vocabulary accounting for90.25%; BE discoursal knowledge, for75.61%; breadth of business content, for70.73%; width of business content, for70.73%. This may be due to two reasons. One is the students’ frequent exposure to sufficient amount of comprehensible and relevant real-world texts, which provides them with many opportunities to master career-oriented business terms, useful expressions and typical features on prototypical samples of BE texts. The other is the BE majors read concatenatively and radiatively, which makes in-textbook knowledge and out-textbook knowledge complementary and reinforces the relevant knowledge for some of the overlappings.Fourthly, most BE majors acknowledge that CBI approach is effective in improving their learning strategies, with cognitive strategies a little more effective than meta-cognitive strategies. In terms of cognitive strategies, applying knowledge of other BE courses and subject-mattered courses to BE reading course occupies87.8%followed by collecting and reading genres of real-world texts,85.38%. In terms of meta-cognitive strategies, reflecting on content learned and methods used is as good as reflecting on one’s advantages and disadvantages, accounting for75.61%. This may be attributed to three reasons. The first is the interdisciplinary features of BE, which urges BE majors to integrate content knowledge with language knowledge. The second is in the course of BE learning, their ability to search for and read information is gradually developed, which may benefit them both at school and for a lifetime. The third is that their readiness for reflections in turn promotes the efficiency and effectiveness of their learning to some extent.The study has three limitations.Firstly, the number of the samples was not large enough to be generalized to all the BE majors of different levels at different universities.Secondly, no control class was involved. If comparison had been made between the experimental class and the control class, the results might have been more convincing.Thirdly, because the interviewees were uncomfortable about being recorded, even though the researcher tried his best to remember what they said in as much detail as possible, it was still possible for him to miss a few points.