An Exploration of Teaching Reform of Career Guidance Course for Foreign Language Majors

South China Business College Guangdong University of Foreign Studies,Guangzhou,China Email:893491023@qq.com

[Abstract]The Ministry of Education has paid great attention to the employment of college students,and colleges and universities have set up career guidance courses for college students and achieved good results.As a compulsory course in the whole university,the career guidance course is oriented to students of different majors,and each major has its corresponding academic background.This paper uses questionnaire survey to study the teaching effect of the career guidance course for college students,as well as analyze the existing problems and improvement strategies through the survey results.

[Keywords]foreign language majors;career guidance course;teaching reform

Introduction

Teaching,as a unique human development activity consisting of the teaching of teachers and the learning of students,has occupied a very important place since ancient times.Through this activity,the teacher guides the students in a purposeful,planned and organized manner to acquire cultural and scientific knowledge and skills,to improve their quality and to make them useful to society.The content of teaching should be practical,scientific and systematic,that is to say,the teaching should emphasize the connection between theory and practice to enhance the pertinence and effectiveness of education.It is indispensable to introduce a variety of teaching methods in compliance with the curriculum system and the rules of classroom teaching,because this can effectively stimulate students’initiative and participation in learning and improve teaching effectiveness.

As an important public course,the career guidance course at this stage emphasizes the important role of career in life development,but also focuses on students’overall development and lifelong development.The course is committed to stimulating the autonomous consciousness of college students’career development,thus guiding them to establish a correct outlook on employment and urging them to make efforts to consciously improve their innovation,employability and career management skills in the learning process(Shi,2012).As a compulsory course in the whole university,the career guidance course is aimed at students of different majors,and each major has its own corresponding academic background,therefore,how to enhance the teaching effect of college students’career guidance course has become a problem to be discussed in teaching practice.

In the classes of foreign language majors,female students account for a large proportion of the class size,so their curriculum may be different from that of science and engineering majors.In this paper,a questionnaire survey was conducted on foreign language majors who had received career guidance courses at the Nanguo Business School of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies as an example.By analyzing the effect of the course implementation,this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions for course reform,hoping that it can help improve the construction of career guidance courses for foreign language majors.

Survey sample and methodology

Foreign language majors who have received the career guidance course at Nanguo Business School of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies are the target of this survey,so as to ensure that students have some understanding of this course.On this basis,the online questionnaire was compiled based on the course system of“Career Guidance for College Students”and the actual situation of the classes.In terms of data collection,SPSS statistical software was used and analyzed.There were 1009 questionnaires submitted in this survey,of which 989 were valid,which met the standard requirements of the questionnaire.The structure of the sample is 140 male students,accounting for 14.16%;849 female students,accounting for 85.84%,and all the students who participated in the survey are foreign language majors of the class of 2016 and 2019.

Findings

E mphasis on Employment Guidance Courses

Most of the students still attached great importance to the course“Career Guidance for College Students”,with 64.45% of them indicating that they wanted to take the initiative to study the course,31.11% of them indicated that they studied the course just to get credits,and only 4.44%of them indicated that they wanted to attend the class.

Poor Teaching Effectiveness

Among them,63.91% of the students think that this course is very helpful for entering the workplace,10.53%think that it is very helpful,18.8%think that it is not helpful at all,and 2.26%think that it is not helpful at all.From the evaluation data,we can see that there is still a need to improve the effect of career guidance in foreign language majors.

Large class sizes limit personalized instruction

Since the classes are concentrated,most of the classes are large,with 100 to 200 students,which makes it difficult for the teacher to take care of each and every student,and only the most efficient teaching method can be used.According to many students,it is difficult to provide personalized teaching guidance because of the different situations of each student,especially in practical teaching,which makes the teaching effect greatly reduced.

Vague contents of the course

The main courses in Career Guidance are career planning,employment situation and policy,resume preparation,interview and written test skills,psychological adjustment methods for employment,and laws and regulations.In this regard,17.78%of the students thought that the curriculum was reasonable and did not need to be improved; 65.93%of the students thought that the curriculum was basically reasonable and could be improved;only 10.37%of the students thought that the curriculum was unreasonable,and they thought that the current course explanation was rather vague and the course content was detached from the actual situation.

Single teaching method and means

The most common method used in career guidance classes is still lecture.However,when faced with this kind of indoctrination style of teaching,37.5% of the students think that this course needs to enrich the classroom teaching methods.They hope that the teacher can combine specific cases with the lecture method and use analysis,discussion and practical teaching methods to enhance the teaching effect.According to the survey,46.5%of the students prefer inquiry-based teaching,including scenarios and typical case studies,while 27.5% of the students want practical teaching,such as social research,demonstration and mock interviews.

Design of pedagogical reforms

Curriculum content should be demand-oriented

Today’s highly developed information technology may bring about situations where yesterday's knowledge is not applicable tomorrow.By the same token,the content of the course needs to be kept up to date.The course should reach out to as many graduates as possible to contact recruiters to understand the hiring needs.On this basis,the course needs to analyze the employment situation in the past two years,the specific requirements of the job,salary and so on,and optimize and improve the course content by taking into account the market demand of English majors and students'concerns.

Improve the professionalism of teachers

In order to develop career guidance courses for foreign language majors,it is necessary to have knowledge and understanding of education,psychology,human resource management,and theoretical courses related to foreign languages.At the same time,teachers need to have rich social experience and comprehensive knowledge of market situation and policies,laws and regulations.However,it is very unfortunate that most of the people who undertake this course are counselors,who are relatively junior and do not come from teacher training colleges,so it is difficult for them to meet the above-mentioned conditions,so the professional level of teachers needs to be improved(Cai,C.M.&Hui,M.Y.2018).

Appropriate increase of class hours and small class teaching

Career Guidance,a relatively complex and comprehensive course,currently occupies only 18 class hours and is attended by a large number of students.The small number of class hours not only can't deliver the huge teaching content to students,but also can't provide more personalized guidance to students;at the same time,the large number of students makes it impossible for teachers to adopt more innovative teaching methods,such as inquiry-based teaching method,practical teaching method and other teaching methods that require sufficient teaching time.We can increase the class hours and decrease the teacher-student ratio,so as to adjust the number of classes to less than 2-3,which will help the teachers to increase the contact between teachers and students and provide more personalized guidance.

Carry out School-Enterprise Exchange Activities and Adjusting Curriculums

Foreign language teaching revolves around a textbook-centered syllabus,which prevents students from gaining inspiration for innovation and entrepreneurship.At the same time,students'ignorance of the industry and the market makes them confused during the study phase,and they gradually lack interest and motivation in learning,thus failing to form a good atmosphere for applying what they have learned.The course teaching and social market needs are not out of step with each other,so the theoretical knowledge taught in the course should be close to the actual situation of students.The course should be designed to regularly carry out school-enterprise exchange activities related to foreign language majors,establish an effective communication mechanism with employers organizationally and institutionally,and implement purposeful guidance.In addition,the program can set up orientation courses,and carry out activities such as experts in the classroom,students attending lectures,and face-to-face meetings with entrepreneurs.At the same time,in order to develop students' ability to obtain and analyze information,a pre-course can be designed,in which students are guided to start from conducting market demand research,understand enterprises and the latest developments,and form knowledge of the demand for the knowledge they have learned.

Use a variety of teaching formats to solve practical problems in teaching

During the implementation process,the authors also found that this phase was characterized by more diverse and flexible needs that could not be met by traditional delivery methods.The projects have different needs in terms of content.In terms of time,there is a need for post-learning services to be available to students at any time and in any place,and therefore the forms of teaching need to be diversified in order to solve practical problems in the learning process.In view of this,in addition to offline training and practical guidance by tutors and elective modules,it is also necessary to use information technology as the carrier,with the use of the Supernova platform,QQ and WeChat groups for online learning and discussion,such as online real-time discussion to answer questions on the technical problems encountered,and through various forms of experimental teaching.

Faced with the impact of COVID-19,Nanguo Business School of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies,with the advantage of the Internet big data era,adopts a hybrid teaching mode based on the MOOC platform.The outstanding advantages of this teaching mode are as follows:1)Compared with traditional teaching methods,the diversity of teaching methods can better stimulate students'interest in learning.Through catechism,we can put forward pre-class thinking problems for students to actively consult the information to solve the problem,and improve the ability of students to learn independently;2)In view of the fact that in the Internet era,students like to use mobile phones or computers to watch videos or look up information on the Internet,thus uploading the teaching content to the Internet in the form of videos can make it convenient for students to watch and learn before and after class,and the lessons can be watched repeatedly,regardless of geographical and time restrictions.Besides,this way can deepen students' understanding and memory of knowledge;3)The adoption of the teaching mode of leading-in discussion and learning in class can increase the interaction and interest between teachers and students in class and enliven the classroom atmosphere,which is conducive to the cultivation of students'self-expression and divergent thinking,improving their ability to combine theory with practice.

Finally,schools should invest more to establish an on-campus internship training platform that is in line with the characteristics of career guidance courses,and purchase practical teaching-related equipment that is suitable for the characteristics of the courses.All these measures are aimed at better building the“Internet+practical teaching”teaching system,and also to better cultivate students’employability.

Explore teaching methods suitable for webcasting

The impact of the new crown epidemic makes career guidance course teachers change the traditional classroom teaching methods in live webcasting,because only by accurately grasping and accurately identifying the individual needs of contemporary college students can we design the content of career guidance courses and explore new ideas,methods,experiences,and cultivate new concepts.For example,it is indispensable for teachers to pay attention to and respond appropriately to students' pop-up content during the live streaming of career guidance courses,as this can enhance students'engagement and motivation.In addition to this,teachers can also allow students to have an online discussion on a particular issue.In this process of dissemination- feedback- explanation- discussion,the interaction between teachers and students is enhanced,and at the same time,teachers are able to understand students'thoughts and ideas accurately and in a timely manner,which provides a good basis for the improvement and innovation of subsequent courses.In the pop-up discussion,teachers should be able to control the direction,select appropriate questions for discussion and control the time of communication and discussion,so as not to deviate from the teaching objectives.Teachers can make use of the characteristics of webcasting across time and space,and invite corporate HR,excellent alumni,entrepreneurs,etc.to share interview experience,business experience,career planning,etc.for students.In addition,teachers can also live broadcast the situation of enterprises and the scene of large job fairs for students when they visit the job market.Therefore,teachers need to carefully design teaching contents and teaching methods according to the characteristics of webcasting to improve teaching effectiveness.

Conclusion

In the 21st century,a new era is coming to us- it is an information-oriented“Internet +”era.In the background of this era,Internet technology is gradually changing the original teaching mode in the field of education.Therefore,colleges and universities should be committed to continuously building and exploring research project exchange platform to promote the research and exchange of college students’career guidance and career planning.In addition,colleges and universities should encourage teachers to actively declare topics and strengthen academic research.In this way,experience in career and entrepreneurship can be transformed into research results,and teaching can be used to promote research.At the same time,this will also enable better application of the research results into teaching,enhance the professionalism of the teaching team and enhance the understanding of the cutting-edge knowledge of the profession,so that teachers can update and improve their teaching programs in real time,and combine the content and mode of teaching with the actual needs of society(Wei,2011).