The Trend of College English Teaching Reform Based on Content-based Instruction

Abstract

At present, the focus of Chinese college English courses is shifting from language skills to content, and the academic community has agreed that content-based instruction is the best way to teach college English. However, for college English courses with different contents, there have been two reform directions: English for general education and English for specific purpose education. This paper analyses and reviews these two viewpoints, as well as discusses and offers suggestions on the two reform contents, based on a quick overview of content-based instruction. I think that whether the next step of college English teaching is based on general education courses or academic English courses, it will undoubtedly be a new challenge for the majority of English teachers. In the process of facing these challenges, teachers' knowledge structure and quality will be improved. They will fundamentally transform from language skills teachers to general education practitioners or academic English practitioners. Because students at different Chinese universities have varying levels of English proficiency, I believe that it is appropriate to rationally plan and allocate English teaching resources based on the characteristics of different universities, and to develop personalized and targeted English teaching syllabuses.

English Needs for Medical Students: Implications For English Course Design

“…She proposed that ESP can draw lessons from the rather developed CBI for developing and discussing ESP reading classes based on the theory of autonomous learning and interactive reading teaching. According to Ma (2021), the emphasis of Chinese college English courses is shifting from language skills to content, and the academic community has agreed that the best way to teach college English is through subject-based training. Additionally, he emphasized that English proficiency levels among students at various Chinese universities vary, so this situational language was created based on how the results of the needs analysis of the actual language used in the target workplace settings were interpreted.…”