《全球职场英语能力量表》的研制及其启示

The Development and Implications of the Global Scale of English for Professional English

职场英语指在国际职场环境中讲不同母语的工作人员为满足工作或商务交际需要所使用的英语①,职场英语能力量表则是对职场英语学习者语言运用能力不同发展阶段典型特征的描述。目前国内外较有影响力的语言能力量表均为通用用途语言能力量表,不能完全适用于特殊用途语言能力的测评。本文以培生教育集团研发的《全球职场英语能力量表》(GSE-PE)为例,介绍了其研发背景和研制原则,重点论述了基于O*NET职场数据库和GSE工作档案库的GSEPE描述语的研制方法,并阐释了该量表的两大特色,最后分析了GSE-PE量表中存在的问题以及对未来我国职场英语能力量表研制的启示。

Professional English refers to English used in occupational settings by native speakers of different languages as a common communication medium to meet professional or business needs,whereas the professional English scale is the characteristic profiles of learners’language performance at different stages in the process of learning professional English.Most influential language scales in the world are designed to assess language ability for general purposes,which are not fully suitable for assessing language ability for specific purposes.The paper uses the Global Scale of English for Professional English(GSE-PE)developed by the Pearson Education Group as an example to introduce the background and principles of developing GSE.And then it focuses on the method for constructing GSE-PE descriptors based on GSE job profi les driven by the O*NET database as well as the two unique features of GSE-PE.Finally,the problems of GSE-PE are analyzed,and the implications for developing language scales for professional English are discussed.