CONTROL AUTOMÁTICO DE APORTACIÓN DE CALOR

Compared to Professor Jia’s interpretation, the interpretation of the instructors did not reflect the reform initiatives. According to the instructors, the Reform was just an effort to enhance language teaching. Chang described the objective of College English as follows:

读写能力…这个文件里的 “提高学生们的综合文化素养,” 这是什么意思呢? 听到过这个术语，但是要解释起来，还想还真是说不清楚，没有留意过这 些…

no matter what reforms are conducted, College English is always a language course, its main objective is to improve the four language skills of the students… “improving students’ cultural capacity and awareness,” what does the culture capacity mean? I heard about this conception, but never paid attention to it, I don’t understand it…

In Chang’s perspective, the objective of EFL courses was always to promote students’ language skills no matter what reforms were implemented. As for the new cultural component of the Reform, Chang could not explain what the “cultural capacity and awareness” mean.

Yang misunderstood the goal of the Reform:

教改，教改不就是加强语言教学嘛，就是要提高学生的语言水平和考试成

绩吧，文化教学，(教改里)没有吧…

the Reform is to enhance the teaching of language, and to improve students’ language proficiency and grades in the tests, culture teaching, I don’t think it is emphasized (by the Reform)…

In her perspective, the Reform was to improve language teaching and learning of the language. She hardly remembered there was a cultural component in the Reform.

Chang and Yang both paid attention to the language aspect of the Reform. It seemed that new cultural component did not attract their attention. Cai also emphasized language aspect. He said:

(新教改)不是让你教(文化)这些东西, 教改…是为了加强语言啊… 不要讲什 么文化, 让我们多讲基础的英语语言知识和技巧啊! …

the Reform does not want you to teach these (cultural) things…it is a reform aiming at enhancing language teaching!…NO culture teaching, it asks for more teaching of the basic English language knowledge and skills!...

In his interpretation, culture teaching was not only ignored, but also being totally excluded from College English teaching.

Compared with findings of the analysis of the Requirements and the interview with Professor Jia, it seems that these three instructors’ interpretations of reform initiatives were all divergent, even opposite to what is stated in the Reform. Compared to them, Lu’s understanding of the Reform sounded closer to the reform initiatives. She said:

可能（教改的）基本方向就是要提高学生的交际能了，增加学生的参与，

因为以前一直都是老师讲授为主嘛，学生训练的时间很少，这是大方向…

因为随着国家与国家之间的交流越来越多，教改就要求我们要多让学生去

了解一些不同的文化，然后他们才能更好的掌握语言来和别人进行交流…

the objective (of the Reform) was to improve students’ communicative

competence and improve their involvement in the class, the class was teacher- centered before, students’ involvement was very limited, it is the direction of the Reform…since there is more and more communication with other nations, the Reform required us to teach more cultural content, so that the students will know more about other cultures, this will help them to use the language more

Lu was the only one among the four that articulated the cultural component of the Reform. She realized that culture teaching was encouraged by the Reform as a tool to promote communicative teaching. She even provided an analysis about why culture teaching was encouraged. Her understanding of the reform initiatives and its new cultural component, however, was still not complete. For example, she had a general idea about the fact that culture was included in the Reform, but she could not provide more clarifications about the details.

The analysis of the instructors’ interpretation of the reform initiatives revealed that some of them had noticed the new cultural component; however, they more or less misunderstood the initiatives of the Reform. For example, most of the instructors thought the main objective of the Reform was to enforce language teaching rather than communicative teaching. The interviews with these instructors revealed the main cause for these misunderstandings. It was the instructors’ unfamiliarity with the new policies. It was indicated that, except for Lu, all the other instructors’ knowledge about the Reform and the Requirements was limited. Their explanation for this unfamiliarity was similar: before I gave them the copies of the Requirements, they had never got an opportunity to read the original document. The only approach for them to know the new policies had been the oral introductions of the Dean of the School and Chair of the Department at the regular school or department meetings. Although the new policies had been mentioned several times at the meetings, no any details or excerpts of the

documents were provided. Therefore, they were not very familiar with the reform initiatives.

the Requirements, I printed out where to find the documents and gave each of them a copy at least a week prior to the second interview with them. I asked them to read through the document before the interviews. However, all the instructors, except for Lu, seemed to just skim the document and did not spent much time studying the content. Only Lu reported spending two days reading through the document as well as reflecting on some specific excerpts regarding culture teaching. The result was that in the

following interviews, only Lu articulated the cultural component in the document. She was also the only one who provided a relatively accurate interpretation of the objectives of the Reform. Their (ongoing) unfamiliarity with the actual documents explaining the new policies could to some extent explain for their limited knowledge about the Reform. To explore the potential factors for the instructors’ ignorance of the new policies, I conducted a follow-up interview with each of them. From these interviews, I found that the School’s instruction and transformational leadership had a critical impact on the instructors’ understanding and attitudes toward the Reform. This is to be discussed in the follow section.

4.4.3 Instructors’ perception of the School’s attitudes toward the Reform