中美技术传播教育比较对外语教育提升的思鉴

A Comparison of Sino-US Education in Technical Communication and Its Implications for Enhancing Foreign Language Education in China

技术传播教育在美国长期高度发展,但在中国还是尚待推介和扶持的新领域。文章比较了中美技术传播教育发展轨迹,论述了两国差距的具体体现。基于缩小差距的目标和新文科建设的理念,文章分析了中国技术传播教育与外语教育相互依托的基础,阐述了二者融合发展的必要性以及在ESP领域的实践分析,建议外语教育尝试"语言+技术传播"方案,在帮助技术传播教育在中国高校普及的过程中走出外语教育的发展困境,实现国家新文科建设所期待的语言服务价值。

Technical communication( TC) education has been highly developing in the United States for nearly a century,but it is still a marginal field to be explored in China. China may find useful references in American TC education practices and take its contextual paces to speed up. In order to identify the gaps between the two countries,the paper reviews the TC literature in the past three decades home and abroad,examines TC education development history thereof and elaborate four specific gaps in: focus of target students;numbers of committed universities;availability of academic resources and professional affiliation support;diversity of TC researchers’ background and their research perspectives.The review brings forth the research considerations on how to accelerate the gap-narrowing process and how foreign language education may contribute its share on the progress. In order to inspire more academic endeavors to close TC education gaps and propose a cowork solution to problems of "homeless"TC discipline and "struggling"foreign language education in China, the following questions are addressed:1) Why is it important to involve foreign language education in promoting TC education in China?2) How do the institutional efforts justify "language+ TC"collaboration in the cap of ESP teaching?3) What are the strategies drawn up from the current TC education practices that may benefit foreign language education in China?4) What are the implications of"language + TC "proposal to foreign language teachers in China?Through qualitative description supported with details interpretation and selected empirical studies,the paper draws the following conclusions tentatively in response to the research questions:1) Foreign language education is expected to inheritantly house and cradle TC discipline to grow in China. Their collaboration and cogrowth can well serve the double purposes of TC gap-narrowing and foreign language education transforming to a new liberal art.2) Some pioneer institutional efforts in merging"language + TC" in the cap of ESP instruction have proved it as a duplicable approach.3) The major strategies drew from Chinese current TC education practices are to extend target student focus from language students to engineer students,to modify language subject contents from TC perspectives.4) The "language + TC " scheme carries the implications that ample research opportunities may occur to motivate Chinese foreign language teachers to localize TC academic resources,to acquire information literacy and to gain broader perspectives on language applications.Summing up, TC education spawning in Chinese universities relies on "language + TC"scheme. Foreign language education will establish its identity as a new liberal art through embracing TC in roles of lanugage service providers. Further research may go for comparative evaluation on career performance of students from universities with and without such an attempt.