Learning Business English In China

This book analyses the learning experiences of students of Business English at a Chinese university. It addresses several topical issues in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) education and Business English teaching, including how ESP students learn, how they develop multiple identities. In particular, it focuses on their professional identity in the classroom, and how these identities are transferred to the workplace. This allows the author to present a model of learning Business English that corresponds to the lived experiences of students in China, but which can also be applied to other ESP learner contexts. In doing so, he demonstrates how to research the professional identity of ESP learners from multiple perspectives, and contributes to the validity of research on language learning and learner identity. This book will appeal to scholars of English for Specific Purposes, Second Language Acquisition, and TESOL Education.

Workplace English language training programs represent a corporate investment in language skills enhancement and human capital development. This book evaluates English language training programs in Chinese workplaces by examining a range of training effectiveness variables and identifying the factors that facilitate or hinder effective learning outcomes for workplace English training programs and explores the potential benefits of these programs. This book will benefit both companies that are developing their training and development strategies and private training organizations that are developing training programs for particular industry and business needs. It will also be an excellent resource for learners who are seeking business English communication skills opportunities and trainers who are refining their workplace teaching practice. This book reiterates the significance of business English communication skills development programs in terms of the benefits to economic globalization, human capital development, employability, sustainable livelihoods, and lifelong learning in China. Having conducted a policy evaluation at both the national and local levels, this book also informs policy stipulation for corporate employee language training schemes. Although this book primarily examines corporate experience in China, the findings and recommendations will have important implications for other countries in Asia and worldwide.

This is one of two volumes by the same editors that explore historical, philosophical, and cultural perspectives on literacy in China. This volume focuses on English literacy in China, while the other volume is on Chinese literacy. In modern day China, English has enjoyed an increasingly important status in education, but not without challenges. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary look at changes in English literacy practices and literacy instruction in China from the first English school in the 19th century to recent curriculum reform efforts to modernize English instruction from basic education through higher education. Together, the essays address a wide array of topics, including early childhood English education, uses of information technology to teach English, and teaching English to Chinese minority students. This work is essential reading for those who want to expand their understanding of English literacy education in China.

This book presents research in business discourse and offers pedagogical approaches to teaching business discourse in both classroom and consultancy contexts that address the key issues of dealing with different types of learners, developing teaching materials and evaluation. Drawing on the authors’ extensive experience of researching business discourse from a variety of different perspectives including pragmatics, discourse analysis, rhetoric, and language for specific purposes, it demonstrates how these approaches may be applied to teaching. Each chapter includes a list of additional readings, together with a number of practical tasks designed to help readers apply the materials presented. Case studies are used throughout the book to illustrate the concepts, thus equipping readers with a set of research tools to extend their own understanding of how language and communication operate in business contexts, as well introducing them to a variety of research-based ideas that can be translated easily into a classroom setting. The book is cross-cultural in scope as it includes perspectives from a range of different contexts. It represents a significant advance in current literature and will provide a valuable resource for students and scholars of applied linguistics, business communication, and business discourse, in addition to teachers of Business English.

• Fourth-year language learning or above in preparation for real-life business situations 各专业学生汉语四年级(或以上)适用 • Timeless business topics ranging from frequently occurring business activities, economic systems and phenomena, to issues of broad interest 使用通用商务题材确保教材长期相对稳定 • Simulated real-world tasks connecting the classroom to China’s current economic developments through students’ own efforts 组织大量以学生为主体的任务型实践活动 ,实现题材即时更新 • A focus on formal language style and business terminology 注重正式语体和专业词语的学习 • Summary of important features of Chinese with emphasis on language learning skills to cultivate self-sustained and effective language learners 归纳汉语基本特点,教授学习方法,培养自学能力

This book provides a contextualized and balanced look into the timely topic of values in English Language Teaching (ELT) materials with a primary focus on the Chinese context. It features three distinct conceptual and methodological perspectives, namely, perceptions of stakeholders such as material writers, teachers and students, multimodal construction of values, and textual representation of values. It is a valuable resource for those interested in the social, cultural, moral, and ideological dimensions of English education in general, and in the textual and multimodal construction of values in language teaching materials in particular.

This book presents an empirical study to develop and validate a proficiency scale of business English writing in the Chinese tertiary context. Through a mixture of intuitive, quantitative and qualitative methods, the book demonstrates how a pool of descriptors are collectively formulated, statistically calibrated and meticulously validated for the establishment of a proficiency scale of business English writing. The writing scale differs in significant ways from the existing language scales, most of which were constructed in English as L1 or L2 contexts and applied to English for General Purposes (EGP) domains. This book also provides important insights into the construct of business English writing as well as the methods for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) proficiency scale development and validation. It is of particular interest to those who work in the area of ESP teaching and assessment.

This volume is the first to offer a comprehensive and, at the same time, in-depth examination of the spread of English and English language education across Greater China. It consists of two parts. Part 1 presents rich sociolinguistic data for easy comparisons between mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, while Part 2 explores in depth the phenomena inside mainland China to provide contrastive analysis of English language use and education in economically booming areas such as Shanghai and Guangdong and underdeveloped regions like Xinjiang and Yunnan. With the descriptive, comparative and analytical accounts of different territories ranging from nation-states to small villages in remote areas, theories on the spread of English, second/third language acquisition and identity are challenged with new concepts proposed and established.