The Status Quo Of Software English Course Design In Higher Vocational Colleges And Survey Analysis Based On Needs

At present, our country conducts frequent technical exchange with foreign countries; software outsourcing industry develops rapidly; outsourcing enterprises have increasing needs for talents in Software English. It is of utmost urgency to cultivate compound talents who are proficient in operations and good at English application in the software industry. In order to meet situation development needs, a lot of higher vocational colleges have set up the course of Software English. Whether design of a course is successful mainly depends on its conformance degree to social and students' needs. Hence, the paper aims at discussing status quo and needs for Software English in higher vocational colleges as well as the gap between needs and status quo. Specifically, the following three study questions are answered:(1) What's the present situation of Software English course design in higher vocational colleges in Hunan?(2) What are the needs put forward by teachers and students in higher vocational colleges and outsourcing enterprises aiming at the software course design?(3) What's the gap between the present situations and needs?The research adopts theories of needs analysis and conducts questionnaire survey and interview to 295 students majoring in software in 3 higher vocational colleges of Hunan, 30 graduates of software major, 11 English teachers teaching in the software major and 48 insiders including project managers in 8 software enterprises based on knowing status quo of course design of Software English in higher vocational colleges by questionnaires. In this way, the paper manages to know their needs; and collects needs and suggestions put forward by teachers, students at school, graduates and enterprises aiming at course design of Software English.Surveys show that the current course design of Software English in the three higher vocational colleges mainly focuses on the teaching of EGP and emphasizes on A-level English proficiency test at present. Due to insufficient teaching hours, Software English cannot satisfy students' needs; current textbooks mainly pay attention to the computer profession, so the students and teachers expect that textbooks can involve more software-related contents which are more relevant to job position situation in software enterprises; lack of qualified Software English teachers is the biggest problem in current teaching; the teaching method of “grammar-translation method” is mainly adopted while there are not enough classroom interactions; Software English mainly targets at cultivating students' reading competence in technical English, but enterprises hope that students educated and cultivated by colleges can directly mount guard while comprehensive application competences including listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation can help graduates solve actual problems in project development; course design of Software English cannot link up with learners' needs for research, teachers' needs for teaching and outsourcing enterprises' needs. The current course design of specialized English can hardly achieve the objective of training skills by taking the professional contents of software technology as language environment, applying English to help students boost their programming and testing ability, and improving the skills of the corresponding vocabulary and document reading, business listening and speaking and E-mail writing in outsourcing business.According to the survey results, the author puts forward conceptions and suggestions about course design of Software English in higher vocational colleges based on the needs for outsourcing: 1. accurately conducting course orientation and determining the course orientation of ESP of “business process of outsourcing + the knowledge of software technology + the application of English” on the level of higher vocational colleges; 2. rationally planning for course objectives and highlighting the professional orientation of knowledge, ability and quality objectives in teaching; 3. formulating a course outline respectively for primary and senior stages according to outsourcing enterprises' needs for English competence of talents; 4. developing English textbooks in the aspect of software respectively for primary and senior stages based on contents of outsourcing work.Far from being perfect, this thesis hopes that the survey and analysis into the stat us quo of software English course design in higher vocational colleges will attach a ce rtain referential significance to adjustment of software English course design in higher vocational colleges.