专家：高职院校英语教学应侧重口语

Yang Yunfei

ENGLISH lessons at China's technical and vocational colleges should focus on speaking the language, as opposed to writing or reading, to improve students' career opportunities, an English-education expert said Saturday.

Niu Jian, secretary general of the Supervisory Committee of English Language Teaching in Vocational Higher Education, a research institute under the Ministry of Education, said a survey shows that the majority of the country's technical and vocational college graduates who majored in English go on to jobs involving sales, and use much more oral English than written in their daily work.

"This shows that oral English training is of the most importance to our students, compared with training in writing or listening. But unfortunately, we have failed to realize this in recent years and our students have learned 'mute English,'" Niu said, referring to students' inability to speak English even though they have a very large vocabulary.

Niu warned that teachers at the country's technical and vocational colleges should change their mindsets and no longer give equal attention to all aspects of English-language learning.

"You should know that speaking English will be the focus of your English lessons, and our English-teaching reforms at technical and vocational colleges in China will implement a shift toward oral English," he said.

Niu made the remarks at a forum on English writing and teaching at Shenzhen Polytechnic. The forum occurred simultaneously with the final competition of the third National English Writing Contest for Technical and Vocational College Students, held at the Shenzhen college Saturday.

The contest, the largest of its kind in China for technical and vocational college students, was held to help students improve their English writting skills, said Xu Xiaozhen, dean of the Applied Foreign Languages School of Shenzhen Polytechnic, which co-organized the event along with Niu's supervisory committee.

Up to 500,000 students from 610 colleges nationwide took part in preliminary competitions. Only 186 made it to the finals, which were divided into two groups: English majors and non-English majors, for one; and contestants focused on writing documents and business letters, for the other.

The list of winners will be unveiled in two weeks, because it takes time to judge contestants' papers, organizers said.