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Teaching Business English for Chinese Students via “Field Work”
CHEN Yi
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2019.10.001
Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, China
A well-designed field work can motivate students and promote active learning. Under this context, the BETL (Business English for Teaching and Learning) presentation that is designed as an assessment to incorporating with a compulsory field trip is a Chinese characterized project which will be elucidated in this essay. It implies that the country must carry out appropriate policies to balance hard and soft skills development. Hurell (2009, p. 397) defines soft skills as involving interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities to facilitate mastered performance in particular contexts. The interview as part of the survey also suggests that the outcome of the field trip was generally positive. In fact, soft skills should been taught by parents preferably, or siblings and relatively at one’s early age (Bhanot, 2009). Consequently, this leaves a huge space for the university professionals in China to accomplish soft skills development or training before they enter the workforce. It emphasizes on enhancing soft skills which require more initiatives to dedicate oneself to self-directedness and motivation on spontaneous learning at any point of life. The positive effects of the field trip are group members’ collaboration and effective time management. 21st century or technology-driven society undeniably and undoubtedly needs hard skills which must be complemented by soft skills. As a result, hard skills pertinent to technological revolution change dramatically; it also affects soft skills involved in such a turbulent world. The former entails literacy, functional and digital competency while the latter consists of learning skills, soft skills, life skills, key skills, and transversal skills. The major strategy that is utilized in our program is the business group presentation with a three-week field trip before the final assessment.
LWL, employability skills, soft skills, BETL (Business English Teaching and Learning)
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