A Tentative Study On Large Class EFLT In CALL Environment

Since the expansion of college enrollment in 1999, most language teachers in colleges and universities have been facing the pedagogical and managerial pressures in large classes. The traditional teacher-centered teaching approach has met with more and more challenges in the current society. With the overwhelming development of Information and Communication Technology and the prosperity of researches on teaching-learning theories, Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) shows its potential in solving these problems. However, the effect of integrating multimedia into the teaching process is far from satisfaction. This thesis starts with the literature review of the domestic and foreign researches on large EFL classes and CALL, followed by the exploration of the theoretical framework—Social Constructivism for multimedia assisted large class English as Foreign Language Teaching (EFLT). In order to examine the factors influencing the effects of computer assisted large class EFLT in China's higher education, the thesis offers two survey studies, which involved 247 non-English majors and 51 language teachers in University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in the Fall semester of 2004. The results of the survey find out that the factors that baffle effective and innovative teaching are the largeness of the class, improper usage of CALL and the test-oriented teaching model. Although, both the teachers and students have perceived that learners should play the central role in the learning process, the habitual way of learning English is still deeply rooted. Moreover, apart from the significant influence of multimedia technology on language teaching and learning, it has also brought some new problems and challenges. An experiment conducted in the same semester involving 69 students in one of the author's classes is explained in detail to offer an example of the practice of utilizing Internet to facilitate language learning in large classes. The whole project was designed in the light of social constructivism and the experiment finds out that the project positively influences the learning process in the following ways: ●helped to motivate the learners, ●facilitated the learning autonomy and cooperation with peers,...