| The newly revised syllabus (1999) of college English requires the students to develop the comprehensive ability to communicate in English. The syllabus analyzes the focus of the college English teaching: linguistic ability and pragmatic ability. In interactive language teaching, the teaching goal is to train and develop the students' ability to communicate in a foreign language as an instrument, laying emphasis not only on developing the students' linguistic competence (i.e. their language knowledge and basic language skills), but also their interactive competence. Communication derives essentially from interaction. Interaction implies both reception and expression of messages. To promote interaction in another language we must maintain a lively attention and active participation among our students. This thesis attempts to make a study on the interactive approach and its applications to college English teaching.Chapter One IntroductionThe traditional language teaching method has been prevalent in Chinese college English classrooms for years. English teaching is dominated by grammar-translation method. The teacher dominates the classroom by explaining the usage of language during all the class hours with less participation of learners. Consequently, the English learners in China can analyze sentence structures and translate the passages, but they are relatively weak in interacting in English with others. Some language teachers in China have now realized that the primary objective of language teaching is to develop interactive competence. They give learners communicative tasks to perform through group work in an expectation that such tasks will add to learners' language development. Students need to participate in activities that engage their interest and attention, so that interaction becomes natural and desirable. So interaction is very important in language-learning situations. Chapter Two Interactive Language TeachingThis chapter provides an overall introduction of the interactive approach. It is necessary to discuss the theoretical basis of interaction studies. Interaction research is based on Krashen's input hypothesis and Long's interaction hypothesis. According to Krashen's input hypothesis (1980), the language that students are exposed to and can understand, known as comprehension input, is the critical ingredient for second language acquisition. So we can get an outline of the theoretical bases on which the interactive approach is based. Interaction is an important concept for language teachers. In the era of communicative language teaching, interaction is the heart of communication. We send out messages; we receive messages; we explain them in a context; we negotiate meanings; and we work together to accomplish certain purposes. Wilga Rivers defines interaction as "Through interaction, students can increase their language store as they listen to or read authentic linguistic material, or even the output of their fellow students in discussions , skits , joint problem—solving tasks, or dialogue journals. In interaction, students can use all they possess of the language----all they have learned or casually absorbed----in real—life exchange, …Even at an elementary stage, they learn in this way to exploit the elasticity of language"(1987:4-5). Students achieve proficiency in using a language when their attention is concentrated on conveying and receiving authentic messages. The most obvious characteristic of classroom interaction is that teaching is more student-centered than teacher-centered. Classroom performance is managed by all present. So that students are encouraged to be involved in the classroom interaction, error correction may be infrequent or absent. The final characteristic of EFL classroom interaction is that most activities in language classroom teaching are carried out in groups.The interactive approach has its own primary principles, following H.D.Brown(2001) the principles go as follows: automaticity; the intrinsic motivation principle; strategic investment...
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