To investigate College English teaching models, the researcher observed five College English classes in Dalian Maritime University from April 2003 to December 2004. The classes shared the following characteristics: the class size ranges from 30 to 60 students; classrooms for reading class contain basically the same facilities: desks, chairs and blackboard while the classrooms for listening are language laboratories and some of those for speaking are equipped with multi-media systems; the total class hours allotted to College English is four hours per week, including two hours for listening every other week; a textbook was used, though of different versions from different publishers in China. Recordings and notes made in the process of observation were reorganised into individual classes labelled A, B, C, D, and E as follows.
Class A: The teacher started the lecture by explaining the new words listed at
the back of the reading passage. Then she went on to explain the difficult points in the passage. She did most of the talking in the lecture and students were given the opportunity to read some part of the text and answer questions regarding the meaning of phrases and expressions. The teacher sometimes used Chinese (mandarin) to assist communication. Students usually made their answers in Chinese.
This excerpt indicated that teaching in CE course is text centred, with students more often than not at the receiving end. Teachers explain the text and go through the key words and phrases suggested by the textbook writers. The teaching of vocabulary- level contents takes up the most of the class hours, as vocabulary and grammar are an important part in CET. The learners learn the language through working with the texts and the exercises regarding reading comprehension, grammar, translation and writing.
Class B: The teacher went around the class in the reading lessons, asking
individual student to read aloud in turn. The teacher interrupted from time to time to check their pronunciation as well as comprehension. When reading aloud, the students often feel tense or nervous. The students were often asked
to make new sentences using the given words or phrases in the text.
Translation or interpreting of individual sentences was also conducted from time to time.
It was common in CE classes that teachers spent a substantial amount of time dealing with words and expressions. Even in reading class, analysis and explanation at the discourse level was often neglected, as it was not stressed in the textbooks or the tests. Advocates of this approach hold that teachers can bring to the students’
attention the conceptual differences between English and Chinese; and translation in the classroom is both economic and effective in explaining a concept.
Class C: When the teacher gave the students a text from the textbook to read,
she first asked them to read it once very quickly for the main ideas. After that, she went through the whole passage again by focusing on words and
expressions, and then one or two of the students were asked to tell in their own words their understandings in English or in Chinese. Next, she asked them to answer more questions and then do some English to Chinese translation to check understanding of the text.
One disadvantage of this text-test based strategy for teaching and learning is that: it does not create opportunities for the practice and application of what is taught. The best possible opportunity for students in this regard might be the reading-aloud. To make it worse, students tended to believe that English could be learned by reciting the CET vocabulary included in the textbooks. As a result, almost every student had a CET vocabulary brochure.
Class D: When the teacher taught reading, she asked the students to read the
text aloud, one paragraph by one paragraph. Then she went over any unfamiliar vocabulary and difficult expressions, mostly by paraphrasing in English, and sometimes by giving them the equivalent words or expressions in Chinese. Then a couple of basic questions were asked to check students’ comprehension of the main ideas. After that, students work in pairs to answer comprehension questions attached to the reading text.
Reading has always been seen as a source of considerable pleasure and satisfaction. Reading for the sake of reading should always be the guiding principle for teaching and learning reading. This is important, but perhaps has been neglected in the pursuit of test results that will improve their position under a statistics-based system. Higher CET passing rate was once a goal for many College English teachers as there was close relevance with promotion, bonus and others.
A learner-centered classroom should be one in which learners are actively involved in their own learning processes. Firstly, learners can be involved in making decisions about what to learn, how to learn, and how to be evaluated. However, considering the possibility that most learners do not possess sufficient knowledge or experience to make such decisions, it is still the professional responsibility of the teacher to make these decisions about what to learn, how to learn, and how to be evaluated. Secondly, the class time should be maximized so that learners, rather than the teacher do the work (Littlewood, 2004, p. 8).
Another important point to make based on the result of this study is that a certain amount of Chinese in CE classes is necessary and beneficial to both teachers and students. Regarding the issue of using the mother tongue in the classroom, according to Auerbach (1993), current SLA theories suggest that use of the L1 reduces anxiety and facilitates incorporation of learners’ life experiences and allows for learner- centred curriculum development. Further justifications for mother tongue use are that it can be very time-efficient in certain situations, for example, in the case of Class C when checking of exact text comprehension is needed (Chambers 1992; Atkinson 1993 cited in Hawks 2001).
Also, this complimentary function can serve as a compensation for the possible disadvantages of L1 in L2 teaching and learning contexts. Chinese explanation would also be important for those who have a high reliance on translation from English into the native language in order to understand the rules of English grammar. What is more, for the majority of non-native English speaking teachers, teaching entirely in the target language is not really feasible, for a variety of ‘real’ and perceived reasons (Chambers, 1992; Phillipson, 1992; Atkinson, 1993; cited in Hawks, 2001). Finally, in many cases, it may not be desirable to teach only in the
target language, since it reinforces existing unequal power balances (Phillipson, 1992).
A large part of the feedback from open-ended interview questions has to do with classroom teaching. Student-centred interactive teaching is strongly desired by the participants. They expect more student involvement as well as teacher-student communication. The following comments, or rather complaints regarding text-test driven teaching from students reflect the situation.
P12 There is not sufficient teacher-student communication.
P5 Hope that teachers would allow more student involvement in class; giving us more chances to answer questions. In this way, we can learn English more effectively.
P2 English teacher should make a good circumstance for talking in English, not just on the book. The vital English skill is oral English, not grammar.
P21 Classroom teaching should be interactive, giving us students more chances to speak in class…
More and more students realized that active participation rather than passive attendance and reception would lead to more effective learning. The motivation, interest, desire, psychological comfort, positive emotional relations of the
communication partners are the required conditions of successful language learning. There exist a number of trends in modern psychological and pedagogical theory that defines the educational process as mutually mediated activity both of a student and an instructor. The specific problem of modern pedagogical psychology is the
problem of a dialogue in teaching or the problem of a pedagogical communication. If the instructor shows that he or she is actively interested in the students as individuals, the learners will respond well, contributing to a good rapport and a productive
learning atmosphere. The necessity for individuals to be prepared to work with and support each other is one of the terms the learning could take place. However, this
remains an issue considering the low-level of learner autonomy and rather large class size for CE learners in China. CE learners were too burdened by the fully loaded timetable to have the freedom to practice self-management of time as well as other autonomous learning activities.
P8 The main objective of classroom teaching is to mobilize students so that they would take the initiative to learning English by adopting more active approaches.
This statement might sound out of tune, but a second thought on the status quo of CE with limited class hours and other resources as well as large class sizes, would reveal that it proposed an invaluable solution to current CE problems. What the learners need most is more motivation and guidance than mere lecturing.
P10 The current teaching is nothing but literary translation sentence by sentence, which is ineffective and boring. ELT should be diversified, not limited to conventional classroom instruction, giving more chance for students to put what they learn into practice.
Clearly, the students were not satisfied with the current traditional grammar- translation oriented classroom instruction. By suggesting more interaction and communication in class, they anticipated to assume a more central role so that they have more say regarding how to put what they have learned into practice. Anyway, it is in the classroom that there is more likelihood for them to secure the partners that are to practise English with. It was also their expectations that teachers would pay attention to the emotional and affective aspects of language learning, which means sharing their own learning experiences and problems, providing sufficient guidance in learning, fostering their motivation and potential for autonomous learning, and enhancing their capacity for independent learning.
P21 Classroom teaching should be interactive, giving we students more chances to speak in class; Teaching approaches should be enriched by classic movies, English speeches and performance so that English usefulness could be best represented.
Some participants complained that they did not always understand the teaching goals through the teacher-centered lectures. The purpose of teaching, as commonly
perceived, is to enable students to acquire strong linguistic competence in the shortest possible time. This influences the decision about teaching method. The question in EFL classrooms is not whether a teaching method is good or not, but whether the teacher knows how, for what purpose, for what kind of students, and in what language situation a particular method is used to enhance learning effectively. Figure 6.5 – Text-Centred Teaching
Q21. My English
teachers usually do most of the talking in class.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Disagree
strongly Disagree commentNo Agree stronglyAgree
Pe
rc
en
t
Q22. Teachers have been valuable in my English studies. 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% Disagree
strongly Disagree commentNo Agree stronglyAgree
Pe
rc
en
t
As indicated in the result of Q21 in the above figure, it is clear that about 80 per cent of the students found themselves in teacher-dominated classrooms. They were discouraged from participation and the social construction of meaning that facilitates language acquisition. This is out of sync with Greene’s concept of democratic classrooms, which emphasized that teachers must learn to listen to student voices as this allows teachers to discover what students are thinking, what concerns them, and what has meaning to them. In addition, the act of listening creates possibilities for
students to introduce multiple perspectives into the classroom, and it encourages students to contribute their social critiques to the classroom dialogue (Xu, 2002, p. 15). Teachers alone are not to blame. Under the current system, teachers are not encouraged to make any changes or to take initiatives. On the contrary, teachers bear the responsibility to use the designated textbooks and follow the methodology required by the curriculum.
Based on the above information, we can conclude that the use of such teaching methodologies as grammar-translation was common in CE classes, though there was not much sign of what Krashen (1987) put forward as typical environment of the grammar-translation approach. This methodology is of little or no use in enhancing a student’s communicative ability in the target language but is the preferred teaching methodology because it requires few skills of the teacher and can be objectively evaluated and graded. In certain contexts, the grammar-translation method may prove good for promoting language proficiency among students. However, there is absolutely no support or justification for this teaching methodology in any of the second language acquisition literature.