An Empirical Study Of Teacher Knowledge Structure In Different Business English Course Modules

The establishment of Business English (abbreviated as BE hereafter) as an independent discipline for undergraduate student education appeals to higher professionalism of BE teacher knowledge structure. The current study is designed to investigate teachers' knowledge structure in different BE course modules. In-depth interviews about teaching and personal career experience of BE teachers with different teaching experience in undergraduate university were conducted. The interviewees are divided into three modules, namely, language competence and skills, business knowledge and skills, intercultural communication according to the Business English National Curriculum released in 2009. Data coding and clustering analysis based on content analysis were conducted. Findings demonstrate that:(1) Teachers of different modules show different the concept of BE teacher knowledge structure, which affect the construction of the teacher knowledge structure.(2) Knowledge constituents of BE teachers in different modules almost the same in the field of language knowledge and skills, business knowledge and skills, intercultural communication skills, interdisciplinary knowledge, pedagogical related knowledge (pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge), business related experience, new knowledge awareness and academic research skills.(3) BE teachers in language knowledge and skills module stress the importance of pedagogical related knowledge, English knowledge and skills and business-related experience, BE teachers in business knowledge and skills module rank business knowledge and skill, pedagogical related knowledge, English knowledge and skills and new knowledge awareness the first place and BE teachers in the intercultural communication module regard the ability of guiding students' simulation of business events as a key measurement.The current study, as an empirical study that based on teachers' experience, is a meaningful supplementary to the theoretical analysis of the "should-be" description of BE teacher knowledge structure as it explored teacher knowledge structure in different modules and paid great attention to the detailed description, which improved our understanding of the constituents of teacher knowledge structure at micro level, which should in term provide references for different module teachers development.