The Practice of Content-Based Academic English Instruction Among Graduate Students of Non-English Major

English is a compulsory course for all graduate students in China. In the highest stage of education, students have strong demands of using English as a tool in their academic study and research. Based on theories of content-based instruction and English for academic purpose, the author puts forward a model of content-based academic English instruction which is summarized as “literature study + academic corpus building + classroom presentation and discussion + paper review writing”. In this model, students as the center of the English classroom are required to carry out a series of tasks to study academically specialized knowledge independently and cooperatively. In such a classroom, graduate students use English as a tool to study literature and to do research in their academic fields through which their motivation is stimulated, their research ability is cultivated, and their English competence is developed. The examination and evaluation approaches are also suggested in this article.