Designing Communicative Classroom Activities In College English Teaching

With a view to meeting the needs of the country and society for qualified personnel in the new era, the objective of College English set by the ongoing College English Teaching Reform is to develop students' ability to use English in an all-round way, especially in listening and speaking, so that in their future work and social interactions they will be able to exchange information effectively through both spoken and written channels. As a result, it becomes increasing important and necessary to develop college students' communicative competence in English .This thesis attempts to explore ways of designing communicative classroom activities through practical application of Communicative Language Teaching in College English teaching in order to help students develop the communicative language ability and achieve the objective of College English teaching.Chapter one, an introductory chapter, introduces the concept of language teaching and learning. In addition, a brief history of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and the ongoing College English Teaching Reform in China are discussed to find out the new requirements for College English teaching. Consequently, the conclusion that it is necessary for College English teachers to adopt the effective teaching methods and approaches that will help students develop the ability to use the language is drawn.Chapter two is primarily about theoretical knowledge of Communicative Language Teaching, including such important aspects as its definition, historical background, theoretical background, as well as techniques in application. The situation of the application of such a teaching approach in China is also discussed in order to demonstrate that CLT should be combined with the reality of our teaching practice so that it can help us fulfill the requirement of developing students' communicative competence in College English teaching.Chapter 3 is concerned with how students feel about Communicative Language Teaching with reference to a survey carried out among some 200 sophomores at the university of technology where the author works to find out their expectations of learning English and how such a teaching approach may help them develop their proficiency in the English language.Chapter four first explains the necessity to design communicative classroom activities to improve the teaching quality, and then explores the ways of designing such activitiesacquired with reference to the relevant academic works and the author's own teaching experience as well as her discussions with other College English teachers and students to help students develop communicative competence. To make it clear, the subordinate parts of this chapter deal with communicative classroom activities aiming at improving students listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills respectively. The experiment carried out by the author in her classes is described in this chapter to prove the effectiveness of such communicative classroom activities.Conclusion: Communicative Language Teaching, which aims at developing communicative competence in students, may help to achieve the objective of College English teaching to a great extent. Teachers are not only language knowledge informant, the organizer and the manager of classroom teaching and learning but also the decisive factor ensuring the success of College English Teaching Reform for they are the very implementer of the reform. What matters is teachers' understanding of what language learning is and how it happens. Therefore, teachers should clearly understand the characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching and meanwhile design communicative classroom activities through practical application of it with reference to the real situation in the classroom to meet the needs of the country and society for qualified personnel with comprehensive and practical ability to use English in the new era. The author hopes that this thesis may encourage College English teachers to form scientific teaching philosophy, to improve their teaching quality, and to better implement College English Teaching Reform.