3. Interviews and Findings
3.1 Research Approaches
First of all, an empirical question of how students perceive and even benefit from IT-assisted ESP education we addressed. To examine this question, the author, an associate or Yantai University conducted interviews with the undergraduates who major in business English-a branch of ESP and the employers engaged in international trade. Using Cameron's motion of "empowering research”, we conducted interviews to solicit the views or the target group about the phenomena under investigation. Since students are invoked increasingly in environment, it is needed to explore how they are actually benefiting from and using IT in their specialized courses. Besides, it is important to learn the obstacles Faced by of them. Structured and well-prepared interviews were conducted with more than 40 undergraduates. And all of them are in their 3rd or 4th year of study, and were ever hah the courses concerning computer and business English, and the like. Additionally, several employers from firms engaging in international business or foreign-venture companies are invited to the interviews. They provided undergraduates with useful and strategic advices related with employment expectation for ESP major. To sum up, three themes were discussed in the interviews:
- Empowerment of applying IC in their ESP learning
- Expectations in their future employment
- Challenges in their future work
During the interviews, each one was asked the answer the questions one by one. And the interviews were highly structured with each one receiving exactly the same questions in the same order. In addition, every interview up for approximately 10 minutes or more. The total time spent in the research interview accumulates up to 9 hours. Furthermore, effective techniques were employed for analyzing qualitative texts by finding illustrative themes which emerge across interviews.