The Enlightenment of Content Schema to the Teaching of Marine Engineering English Listening and Speaking in Higher Vocational Maritime Colleges

Abstract

Aims at the characteristics of the Marine Engineering English learners in higher vocational maritime colleges and the low efficiency of the traditional Marine Engineering English listening and speaking teaching, based on the schema theory, with the content schema accumulation and activation as a breakthrough, this essay puts forward some suggestions to improve marine engineering English listening and speaking teaching from three aspects of curriculum setting, teaching material construction and class teaching design. In the traditional teaching of Marine Engineering English listening and speaking (MEELS) class, students are regarded as passive recipients of information. During the learning process, the students are lack of interest and motivation. Some students take passing the competency assessment as the sole purpose of learning, with which their communicative competence couldn’t be improved effectively. However, the international shipping labor market and the STCW Manila amendment put forward higher request to the English listening and speaking ability of the crew. To meet the urgent needs of the "high quality crew", this paper discusses the effective and suitable way of teaching MEELS in higher vocational colleges from the perspective of content schema.