The axis tlhesis of this paper is that, today, it is ESP (English for Specific Purposes) in particular, rather than General English, that is the agent of the spread of globalization. Currently, ESP is witnessing an ...The axis tlhesis of this paper is that, today, it is ESP (English for Specific Purposes) in particular, rather than General English, that is the agent of the spread of globalization. Currently, ESP is witnessing an unprecedented spread, to a point of almost taking over the relevance and frequency of teaching of General English. Hereby, we look at the phenomenon of globalization as a social concept that demands of education that students are taught performativity, therefore just skills needed for the global economy functioning, and not education as a move towards change, refinement, and individuation of a personality. ESP is taught as a sort of socially neutral language, as it presumably deals only with the language of some specific science or profession. Relying on the relevant work of the acclaimed social theorists, it is our claim that as there is no socially and/or ideologically neutral language, and that this fact applies for ESP. It is because of this, that we hereby advocate a strong and urgent need for the application of critical pedagogy and critical literacy stances in the practice of ESP, and we give some broad directions of how that can be achieved.展开更多
Critical thinking ability is the core skill of higher education. How to train the non-English major students' critical thinking ability in the English writing instruction plays an important role in the compound perso...Critical thinking ability is the core skill of higher education. How to train the non-English major students' critical thinking ability in the English writing instruction plays an important role in the compound personnel training. In this paper, the reading-discussion-writing approach which guarantees the innovative construction of writing is proposed to train college students' critical thinking ability, and specific suggestions on the practice are articulated such as designing diversified listening and speaking lead-in activities to activate or supplement the relative notion and background knowledge, using variety of challenging reading-discussion-writing tasks, and conducting mutual evaluation, etc., to let students deeply understand the text through discussion and promote their language competence and writing ability as well as their reflective thinking ability.展开更多
文摘The axis tlhesis of this paper is that, today, it is ESP (English for Specific Purposes) in particular, rather than General English, that is the agent of the spread of globalization. Currently, ESP is witnessing an unprecedented spread, to a point of almost taking over the relevance and frequency of teaching of General English. Hereby, we look at the phenomenon of globalization as a social concept that demands of education that students are taught performativity, therefore just skills needed for the global economy functioning, and not education as a move towards change, refinement, and individuation of a personality. ESP is taught as a sort of socially neutral language, as it presumably deals only with the language of some specific science or profession. Relying on the relevant work of the acclaimed social theorists, it is our claim that as there is no socially and/or ideologically neutral language, and that this fact applies for ESP. It is because of this, that we hereby advocate a strong and urgent need for the application of critical pedagogy and critical literacy stances in the practice of ESP, and we give some broad directions of how that can be achieved.
文摘Critical thinking ability is the core skill of higher education. How to train the non-English major students' critical thinking ability in the English writing instruction plays an important role in the compound personnel training. In this paper, the reading-discussion-writing approach which guarantees the innovative construction of writing is proposed to train college students' critical thinking ability, and specific suggestions on the practice are articulated such as designing diversified listening and speaking lead-in activities to activate or supplement the relative notion and background knowledge, using variety of challenging reading-discussion-writing tasks, and conducting mutual evaluation, etc., to let students deeply understand the text through discussion and promote their language competence and writing ability as well as their reflective thinking ability.