Graduate English Listening and Speaking Course

Author: Gong Li
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: When embarking on the design of English teaching for high-degree programs and immersed in researching strategies to enhance the comprehensive language application skills at this specific stage, there are two fundamental insights we dare not overlook. First, it is essential to understand the knowledge structure, professional development, and academic mission of the target audience. Second, it is necessary to continuously adjust the teaching syllabus, curriculum design, textbook compilation, and teaching methods for this stage. This is because economic development and social progress directly impact language education, and our language education should strive to adapt to the rapidly changing world, paying attention to meeting the diverse needs of talent in terms of economy, technology, and cultural development.
By the end of the last century, we incorporated this seemingly simple understanding into the preface of the "CAS Graduate English Series." We were greatly encouraged when this textbook was also approved by the Ministry of Education and included in the "National Key Textbooks for Higher Education in the 9th Five-Year Plan." In that series, we emphasized intellectual depth, ensuring that while promoting both humanistic and scientific spirits, we deliberately increased the content of literature, history, philosophy, and comprehensive knowledge for postgraduates with STEM backgrounds, helping them improve their cultural literacy and comprehensive language application skills in the "later stages of classroom teaching."
In recent years, leaders of educational administration and scholars engaged in foreign language education research have frequently expressed similar or closely related views, which naturally further inspired us. We have strived to reflect this understanding in the teaching reform practice of degree English at the University of Science and Technology of China. This book, "Graduate English Listening and Speaking Course," is a compilation and refinement of some of the comprehensive training content used for master's degree students in recent years. It can be used before "English Intensive Reading" from the aforementioned series to form a relatively complete textbook for comprehensive English at the high-degree level. Of course, this book can also be used independently or in conjunction with relevant elective courses or series lectures.
We have noticed that the target audience at this stage has several distinctive characteristics: their foundational knowledge is broader and more solid, and they are largely free from short-term and have moved beyond the shadow of exam-oriented language learning. They are approaching or entering the depth of their respective disciplines and the forefront of academic research. Their strong sense of innovation and understanding of the key elements that determine career success make them highly eager to improve their cultural literacy and language application skills. This also prompts us to consider: in what aspects should the language education philosophy and teaching methods at the high-degree level differ significantly from all previous stages? Traditional "advanced" textbooks seem ill-suited to meet these demands, while simple skill-based teaching methods are prone to superficiality in both content and thought, which is precisely what thoughtful young scholars are reluctant to choose.
Anyone familiar with applied linguistics knows that no matter how rich the "input" is, it can only influence the "output" to some extent and cannot encompass or replace training in this regard. However, under any circumstances, a large amount of input that is contemporary and intellectually rich is indispensable for our graduate students. What we are committed to is designing comprehensive language training that combines their characteristics while updating and reinforcing traditional "input." Under the principle of "comprehensiveness," we fully highlight "output training" to inspire practitioners' thinking and promote the generation of "procedural knowledge," allowing traditionally rigidly divided skills like listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation to be flexibly interwoven, blurred in boundaries, and integrated with one another.
This book has undergone three rounds of trial use and two revisions at the University of Science and Technology of China. If used with attention to teaching methods, this textbook should demonstrate certain enlightening and guiding functions in honing language application skills and developing communicative competence.