Teaching Business English to Business Students in the Post-Method Era: A Case Study in a Chinese Independent College

With ESP courses increasingly penetrating into college English curriculum in Chinese universities, how to teach such courses has emerged as an area of current academic interest. B. Kumaravadivelu argued that language teaching was involved in a pattern that connects the various elements of learning, teaching and teacher education, and that language teaching was so sensitive to the context that there was no best method for teaching it. Therefore, a three-part framework of post-method language pedagogy particularity, practicality, and possibility should be developed in language teaching. Based on this theory, this paper examined the teaching of business English to business students in a Chinese independent college. Having discussed the particular context and the teaching practice, the paper found that content-based teaching was not adequate to meet the needs of students who have been frequently frustrated by language barriers. In this case, business English was not only for acquisition of business knowledge through English, but also for linguistic competence.