An Empirical Study On Knowledge Structure And Development Paths For Business English Teachers

This thesis reports the findings of a research project about knowledge structure and development of Business English teachers conducted by a social science research group from Hunan University. The research project has been divided into two phases, the first phase was qualitative research of knowledge structure and development paths of Business English teachers, and the second was quantitative questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was developed by the researcher based on the findings of the qualitative research and literature collected by the researcher. The questionnaire was sent to Business English teachers participated in the 11th National Business English Conference held in Yantai, Shandong province.113 valid questionnaire copies were collected and data were then analyzed in SPSS and AMOS. Major findings are as follows:1. Two factors, academic knowledge ability and teaching knowledge ability, that affect knowledge structure of Business English teachers are identified; For the development path of Business English teachers, four factors, business development path, teaching development path, education development path and research development, are identified.2. Based on the fitting of factor analysis (SPSS) and confirmatory factor analysis (AMOS), the models of Business English teachers' knowledge structure and development paths have been obtained, and what's more, calculated the correlation coefficient and weighs of every factors and variables.3. After the process of data fitting, it can be found that not all the factors are correlated. The two factors in knowledge structure have a close tie with each other, while the four factors in development path are less interacted. Factor with high correlation in development paths are:firstly, business development and teaching development; secondly, teaching development and research development; lastly, business development and research development.4. The findings of AMOS show that to improve their own knowledge structure, Business English teachers should pay more attention to combining business knowledge and language knowledge as well as to enhancing comprehensive practical knowledge and skills. In terms of development path, nowadays, Business English teachers are facing with greater challenges in education development. In addition to maintain English learning ability, Business English teachers should also improve business knowledge ability and keep sensitive to updating knowledge. The teaching development gives priority to combination of theory and practice and to nurturing students into inter-disciplinary talents with capacity for independent thinking and solving problems. The biggest difference between Business English teachers and general English teachers lies in business development. Business English teachers need to constantly strengthen their business knowledge ability and enrich their practical experience by both national policy support and self-willingness. At present phase, Business English teachers need to be more patient and pay more attention to research development since policy support form governments can hardly meet the demands of rapid development of Business English.