刊物属性
  • 刊物名称:校园英语
  • 国内刊号:CN 13-1298/G4
  • 国际刊号:ISSN 1009-6426
  • 邮发代号: 18-116
  • 数据库收录:中国知网
  • 投稿邮箱:
      bianji@xiaoyuanyingyu.com
  • 作者:校园英语杂志社 字数:3975 点击:

      【Abstract】Language teaching has traditionally been a task for teachers to teach vocabulary items and grammatical rules and to explain to students how a foreign language works in reference to their mother tongue. For a long time language teaching was a means to the end of understanding a written culture. This had two practical corollaries: to grade the students on the acquisition of discrete segments of learning and to sort them according to their marks, with a view to preparing them for the world of work in that it helped employers select candidates on their school or university grades. The result of this approach is plain to see: less than a third of the college students use a foreign language successfully. Findings from research and academic thinking have hinted at different ways to ensure that students learn successfully what is on offer in the world around them. However, for a long time, there was no way of facilitating this concept, until we focus on the spirit of collaboration and meaningful communicative English environment. I believe that, with deepening of the realizing, English learning will exceed our expectations. However, we shall have first to review all our “common sense” on teaching and learning.
      【Key words】English teaching and learning; spirit of collaboration; meaningful communicative English environment
      1. Problems met in teaching and learning
      1.1 As a searching the material and preparing for the papers, I was quite surprised that “for students, the biggest obstacle to speaking in a foreign language class is their teacher!”
      I have been teaching college English,, focusing on English communication, and I was hoping to find the above criticism of teachers. Then I discussed with a group of college English teacher. However, I was not prepared for the tacit agreement which greeted what I hoped to be a controversial view. This preamble gave rise to a lively discussion of whether, how and to what extent students should be “corrected” during a conversation class. Needless to say, no consensus was reached and this may be a satisfactory conclusion in itself, since each teacher, like every one of his or her students.
      After ten years of observations, I believe that correcting most students’ mistakes yields very little improvement, despite the fact that most students will beg their tutors to correct their mistakes.
      1.2 Students of Dalian University of Finance and Economy spend a week mainly practicing their oral skills in a collaborative environment and in a mixed-ability setting. They take part in a simulation which requires the setting up of a block of flats, an apartment building, inventing some characters who will inhabit the flat and creating some interactions between them. The week’s experience culminates in simulating a municipal event where the inhabitants of each of block of flats, eg. Each group of students-show the others a program of activities designed so as to foster a better life for everyone where they live. These activities range from the creation of parks, cultural festival. In order to achieve their objectives students draw from their own experience of life and their own very personal store of linguistic expressions when on an ad-hoc basis. There is constantly called upon to contribute to the collective reaching of an objective. All activities are backed up by posters displayed on the walls which constitute a written record of the completed work. This allows staff and students to constantly remind themselves how much work has been accomplished. The posters are closely scrutinized and corrected by the tutors to ensure that no mistake is left on display. And the facilitators possibly believe that the students, having seen their individual mistakes corrected, will never make them again!