Toward a competence-based vocational senior secondary English curriculum

Vocational education (VE) in Mainland China has been undergoing curriculum reform since the new millennium, in tandem with reforms in primary, junior and senior secondary education and higher education. This chapter begins with an introduction of the three types of post-secondary vocational schools in Mainland China, with a focus on vocational senior secondary schools. The chapter then describes the vocational senior secondary English curriculums issued since the late 1980s, in particular the 2000 National Vocational English Syllabus (NVES) and the 2009 NVES. The chapter finally presents a detailed description of the competence-based 2009 NVES, with a critical analysis of its two competence dimensions - the level of scales on the vertical dimension and the descriptive scheme on the horizontal dimension. The purpose of the chapter has been to provide a critical overview of the current competence-based vocational senior secondary English curriculum in Mainland China. Copyright © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.