A Brief Exploration of the Development of Business English Major in China — Challenges and Opportunities

The issue of Business English (BE) Major development is currently being discussed hotly in China since it has been officially approved by Chinese Education Ministry about twelve years ago. This paper takes a historic overview and explores the reasons about why BE major is necessary in China’s higher education institutions, including discussion on BE’s definition in China context, its relationship with English for Specific Purpose (ESP). Through combining ESP’s popular theory – NAT (need analysis theory), the paper concludes problems raised during the development of BE major in China, including disputations about its curriculum design, learners’ dissatisfaction, and BE teachers’ professional development. Further application discussion on NIT’s BE major (Ningbo Institute Technology, Zhejiang University, where the author is working at) will also be shown in the later part. This paper suggests to design curriculum that are suitable to China’s different levels of universities rather than to merely learn from good universities either abroad or domestically. The paper then calls for a further exploration specifically in terms of improving curriculum design and BE teachers’ professional development.