| Much progress has been made in college English teaching since China's reform and opening to the outside world. Correspondingly, college students'abilities to use English have improved a lot as well. It is undeniable, however, that foreign language teaching in China has long been beset by the problem of being"time-consuming and low-efficient". Although earnest endeavors have been made and various solutions have been suggested, the outcome has regrettably fallen short of the public expectation. From the end of last century China has been meeting the challenge to increase its development of higher education, which finds itself out of all proportion to the lagging behind of foreign language curriculum design and study. The absence of probe into"time-consuming and low-efficient"problem from the perspective of curriculum is more obvious under the background of integration between information technology and foreign language curriculum, which leads to a profound change in the foreign language curriculum construction paradigm.When the information technology represented by computer network is integrating with foreign language curriculum, a corresponding change is taking place in the construction paradigm of foreign language curriculum: the traditional"2 + 1"model (theory, method + curriculum or textbook) is transiting into a"3 + 1"model (theory, method, technology + curriculum or textbook). To put it another way, theory, method and technology are all embodied in foreign language curriculum or textbook. We are safe to say that the change in curriculum construction paradigm is one of the primary features of foreign language curriculum under the background of computer network. Based on all these factors, this study, taking the third college English teaching reform as the research background and"3 + 1"model as the main line, conducts a survey on the foreign language hidden curriculum of three universities and some of their teachers and students. Findings of the survey are believed to be helpful to our foreign language curriculum design, in the hope of promoting college English teaching reform.The dissertation is composed of seven chapters and its overall framework is as follows. The first chapter serves as the introductory part, briefing the origin and background of the study as well as the structure of the dissertation. Meanwhile, both the theoretical significance and practical implications of the research are introduced. The research methodology employed in the study is discussed too.What follows the introductory part is the literature review, where the author attempts to provide a panorama of previous studies on curriculum and hidden curriculum. The author's comments on the literature are also made. On the basis of previous literature and the de facto foreign language teaching, the author offers a new interpretation of curriculum and hidden curriculum, the purpose of which is to pedestal the further research. The proposition that curriculum refers not only to the"what should be", but also the"what actually is and happens"is put forward in this part. Therefore, curriculum is redefined in this study as"all the educational activities planned and taking place within school aiming at the educational goal". As a subcategory concept of curriculum, hidden curriculum is correspondingly redefined as"the implicit educational activities taking place within school that are relative to the definitely-stated and pre-specified formal curriculum". It is pointed out that, instead of being opposite to each other, formal curriculum and hidden curriculum are mutually-inclusive and the distinction between the two is made to highlight the importance of hidden curriculum. Meanwhile, a comprehensive and scientific study on curriculum necessitates such a distinction.The survey of foreign language hidden curriculum is conducted from the dimensions of school, teacher and student for the sake of clarity. Chapter Three, taking College English Curriculum Requirements as the formal curriculum, focuses on the foreign language hidden curriculum on the part of schools. After a brief introduction of the third college English teaching reform, the dissertation expounds the research question, research variables and research subjects. The employment of research methodology is justified as well. Findings indicate that the three selected universities have their specific hidden curriculum in teaching requirements, curriculum configuration, teaching mode, teaching management and evaluation to different degrees, which do not conform to the formal curriculum in some cases. Schools'hidden curriculum can be accounted for from both the internal and external sources: the internal source is related to the rigidity of College English Curriculum Requirements, while the external source is related to the notion of school management, deviation from College English Curriculum Requirements, and the backwash effect of testing.Being a teacher entails understanding and participating in curriculum, which, in return, is not valuable without teachers'understanding and implementing. In chapter Four, questionnaires and interviews are employed to carry out a survey on foreign language hidden curriculum on the part of teachers. Twenty-six teachers from the three selected universities voluntarily participated in the survey. Hidden curriculum on the part of teachers is found to be existing in their teaching content, teaching mode and media, and the roles they and their students play in actual teaching. Hidden curriculum on the part of teachers contributes to the changes in formal curriculum that is embodied in school syllabuses and some reform-related ideas. Teachers'hidden curriculum can be attributed to their inadequate involvement in curriculum reform, their belief and cognition, cognitive context and demands from their students, etc.After the examination of hidden curriculum on the part of schools and teachers, chapter Five, taking two hundred and seventy-three students from three universities as the subjects, targets the foreign language hidden curriculum on the part of students. Research variables include students'English learning motivation, learning content, and their preferred way of learning English. Hidden curriculum in the above aspects assumes different properties: learning motivation tends to be instrumental rather than integrative, learning content is closely related to learning motivation, and students'identity sense of information technology under the"3 + 1"curriculum construction paradigm is not strong enough. When it comes to the reasons for students'hidden curriculum, the backwash effect of testing, curriculum configuration and shortcomings of the teaching software are among the typical ones.Chapter Six presents a discussion of the study, aiming to clarify the enlightenment of hidden curriculum on foreign language curriculum design. At the beginning of this chapter is a review of curriculum design theories and models, which is followed by an elaboration of the stages foreign language curriculum design has been undergoing and will develop into, such as traditional model, coherent curriculum, dynamic curriculum and ecological curriculum. Principles that should be adhered to in incorporating hidden curriculum into curriculum design are put forward, such as learner-centeredness, teacher-highlighting and contextualization, etc.As a summary of the study, the final chapter makes an analysis of its originalities and shortcomings, pointing out that although the study provides a new interpretation of curriculum and hidden curriculum and some empirical studies on foreign language hidden curriculum are carried out, the study needs to be perfected in the types and number of schools involved as well as the design of empirical study. Future studies on hidden curriculum are also discussed.As a whole, the exploration into English teaching reform of the three universities from the perspective of hidden curriculum enriches the scope of curriculum studies and lends an impetus to development of curriculum theories, thus providing some enlightenment to the discipline of curriculum studies. In particular, this dissertation brings about a change in the existing nature of studies on hidden curriculum by promoting it from the state of implicitness/invisibility to that of explicitness/visibility. In addition, this dissertation highlights the importance and implications of hidden curriculum in foreign language curriculum design. This study is unlikely to provide solutions to all the problems in our foreign language education once and for all, but it is desirable that hidden curriculum can offer a new perspective to inspect the long-besetting problem of"time-consuming and low-efficient"in our foreign language teaching.
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