An Interactive Approach To College Spoken English Teaching: An Experimental Research

In the process of college English teaching in China, non-English majors'low competence in oral performance and communicative competence has been a critical and urgent issue in the reform of foreign language teaching in China. With the reform of syllabus of college English, the changing demand of society for personnel as well as the study and development of communicative language teaching, Interactive Approach has been an important field in foreign language teaching and second language acquisition. Interaction is the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other. Classroom interaction refers to the harmonious resonance of teaching and learning, with teacher as facilitators and students as main players. Classroom activities should be constructed by both teachers and students, and English is really used as a tool for communication. Constructivists (e.g., Piaget; Bruner & Kelly.), interactionists (e.g., Long) and socio-cognitivists (e.g., Vygotsky) believe that learning process is an active and interactive process. Interactive approach also has its own unique teaching principles, proposed by Brown (2001). This thesis ,with relevance to the four aspect of communicative competence proposed by Canale and Swain(1980), is going to establish an interactive college spoken English teaching model under the theoretical framework of Piaget, Long, Vygotsky and Brown. Meanwhile, it attempts to explore the effect of this model on learners'communicative competence. The study focuses on the following questions:1. Based on previous theories and studies on interaction, what interactive ELT model could be established for EFL teachers adopt to promote classroom interaction?2. Can interaction really improve learners'spoken English proficiency?3. If so, does interaction work in all the four categories of communicative competence: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence?This thesis, adopts quasi-experimental method. Two intact classes from Yanshan University are selected as the subjects, who are non-English majors. It aims at examing the differences between EG and CG before and after the teaching experiment in terms of the overall oral communicative competence and the four categories of communicative competence. Questionnaire, pretest and posttest are used for data collection and Statistical Package for Social Sciences 13.0 for data analysis. The results showed that the interactive ELT model exerted better effects on learners'overall oral performance(sig.= .008 < .05,). In respect of the four components of communicative competence, traditional teaching method exerted no significant differences in each of the four categories of communicative competence while Interactive Approach had positive effects on improving learners'discourse competence and strategic competence but not grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence.The results of the study prove that the established interactive ELT model is feasible and effective in promoting Chinese college English learners'oral communicative competence. The quasi-experimental research in this thesis provides valuable experience and specific methods for the course design of interactive spoken English classes. Moreover, the study explores the feasibility of FLT theories abroad applied in Chinese context, which promotes the application and wide-use of Interactive Approach to college language pedagogy in China.