CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Orientation
With the development of technology and the globalization of economy, communication between different parts of the world deepens, among which a substantial part is business communication. The increasingly changing world gives rise to new problems and prompts university education to make a change accordingly. One of the phenomena in the new round education reform is the development of interdisciplinary subjects, among which is BE, a subject established to smooth business communication between different countries.
BE derives from English for Specific Purpose in Applied Linguistics. BE teaching and researching are highly emphasized ever since. Along with the development of the theory and practice of BE, it has become an interdisciplinary subject with its subject theory being based on Applied Linguistics, Language for Specific Purposes, Cross-cultural Communication, Discourse Analysis and related business disciplines etc. (Wang, 2012). The history of BE teaching and researching in China started from the Foreign Trade English in University of International Business and Economics and has been lasting for more than sixty years. With the fast development of the import & export activities, investment abroad and foreign investment absorbing, the economic and social development in China demands more BE talents. In 2007, the Ministry of Education approved the establishment of BE as an undergraduate program. In 2012 it was enlisted in Undergraduate Program Base Directory and in 2013, there are 216 Schools and Universities who have set BE undergraduate program (Wang, Ye, Yan, Peng, and Xu, 2015:297). BE differs from GE teaching in that it is an interdisciplinary subject which tries to integrate English ith Business to meet the modern cross-national business communication.
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1.2 Rationale
The highly complex issues imposed by the development of society and science which crossed the boundary of mono-discipline are in need of integration and association of multiple subjects. This has resulted in the emergence of interdisciplinary studies. The integration trend of the scientific development has been reflected in education, which no doubt requires a comprehensive revolution and stressing the crossing and penetration between disciplines in order to adapt to the new social and scientific developing trend.
Because of the development of international business, the demand for BE talents increases as well, because of their sound English language foundation, systematic international BE knowledge and cross-cultural communication ability. Besides, with the process of globalization, BE has become a major international working language for global products, capital exchange and flow, international investment, international management and cross-cultural communication. In the nowadays international business world, the competition between different countries is increasingly pierced. To gain a competitive advantage in the international business world, high quality BE elites are necessary. Thus, carrying out BE teaching and researching is an objective requirement for accelerating social economic development and prospering export-oriented enterprises.&n
