A Study On ESP Teacher Development Strategies In Local Application-oriented Institutions

Globalization in the twenty-first century has a more demanding requirement for graduates with practical ability to use English in academic research or professional work. Many colleges and universities have conducted ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teaching along with EGP (English for General Purposes) teaching. According to the College English Teaching Guide (2015), ESP, as an indispensable part of college English teaching, can effectively promote students’transformation from knowledge-oriented learning to application-oriented learning. It also indicates that colleges and universities should establish a relatively stable team of ESP teachers and a special committee for ESP teaching composed of both the school leadership and ESP teachers whose main task is to coordinate and monitor ESP teaching and other related work. Thus, it has become an inevitable trend for local universities, mostly occupational or normal schools in the past, to transform to application-oriented universities, which needs a systematic readjustment and reform in areas like majors, new curriculums and teacher structure.ESP teaching in our country did not start until the 1980s, and the viewpoints on ESP are neither systematic nor complete, nor is the theory of ESP teachers’professional development. In fact, we are actually facing the problem of the instability of the ESP teachers (Liu Xiongyou,2010). From the perspective of educational ecology, this study is designed based on the three-fold nature of narrative stories by Barkhuizen (2008) and needs analysis to make an investigation on the status quo of ESP teachers’professional development in a local university (B) through a series of comparisons with a key university (A) in China. Self-designed questionnaires based on literature review were used as the basic instrument along with semi-structured interviews. Altogether 54 teachers,159 students,6 staff working in administration office and 12 companies responded to this study about their opinions and attitudes toward ESP and other related issues.The research findings highlight the immediate need for ESP teachers’professional development by revealing that both students and social community (mainly companies) have high expectations for ESP courses while the university and teachers are not yet prepared. Factors impeding ESP teachers’professional development come both from external environment and internal motivation. The external factors mainly include the living conditions and the school climate, and the internal factor lies in the absence of related knowledge, insufficiency in perseverance, job-burnout and the traditional thinking pattern of the original curriculum model.Based on the aforementioned findings, the author puts forward a series of strategies from the aspects of educational institutions and teachers in the hope of creating a sustainable development model for ESP teachers and for the benefits of all parties concerned. Limitation and suggestions for future research are proposed in the conclusion part.