A Study Of University Students’ Mechanical Engineering Foreign Language Ability In The Context Of The Belt And Road Initiative

With the proposal of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the promotion of its construction,mechanical engineering domain,one of its most important components,poses higher requirements for the employees’ mechanical engineering foreign language ability.Nowadays,increasing attention being paid to doing research on foreign language ability has promoted the development of foreign language ability.However,there is not much research on domain foreign language ability,which plays a fundamental role in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.This study focuses on domain foreign language ability and sets mechanical engineering domain as a case,trying to investigate the current situation of the mechanical engineering students’ domain English ability and also trying to explore the factors that affect the students’ domain English ability.Accordingly,this study proposes suggestions on domain English teaching and it is hoped that this will set an example for future studies on this topic.This study gives a definition to the domain foreign language ability and proposes a theoretical framework accordingly,which serves as the theoretical basis for the empirical study of the mechanical engineering students’ domain English ability in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.The theoretical framework of domain foreign language ability is adapted by combining the definition of language ability in China’s Standards of English Language Ability(2018)and Bachman’s(1990)definition of the communicative language ability.By the questionnaire and the interview,the study attempted to explore the current situation of mechanical engineering students’ domain English ability and the factors that influence mechanical engineering students’ domain English ability.There were 146 mechanical engineering students participating in the questionnaire and 25 employers from the mechanical engineering companies and 10 university English teachers involved in the interview.The questionnaires were given out to mechanical engineering students and the interviews were conducted towards the interviewees face to face and one by one.The results of the questionnaire were analyzed by EXCEL in the form of means of different items and the recordings of the results of the interview were transcribed into Word form for further analysis.By analyzing the results of the questionnaires and the interviews,the current situation of the mechanical engineering students’ domain English ability is learnt,and how the factors lead to the current situation is also learnt.As to the former,the students’ current domain English ability could not fully meet the requirements of their future job.On the other hand,in terms of the latter,various aspects of the teaching by university English teachers might account for it.To be specific,firstly,the students consider that their domain language competence is weaker than domain strategic competence;and the students also consider that their domain textual competence is the weakest among all the components of the domain foreign language ability and that their domain English oral competence is stronger than the domain English writing competence.Secondly,various factors lead to the current situation of the students’ domain English ability.To be specific,due to the lack of enough training in domain knowledge,the university English teachers find it difficult to be qualified for the teaching of domain English.Moreover,the university English teachers’ arrangement of time in teaching speaking and writing is not balanced.The time in writing is less than speaking and the content of it is limited to academic writing,which is not practical for students’ future development.Furthermore,there is not much communication between the company and the university,making the university teachers and students not quite aware of the requirements of the company on the students’ domain English ability.As a result,what the teachers teach is not totally in accordance with the actual needs of the society,which is not good for the cultivation of the students’ domain English ability.Accordingly,measures for the improvement of the students’ domain English ability are put forward.It is hoped that this study could be suggestive for the later study of domain foreign language ability in terms of both theoretical and empirical studies.