A Study Of The Experiencing English Coursebooks From The Perspective Of Experiential Learning Theory

With the wide spread of experiential learning, experience-oriented teaching modehas attracted attentions in a certain degree, but the research related to the ExperientialEnglish teaching materials is not enough. Based on experiential learning theory (Kolb,1984), the thesis tries to get a clear understanding on the status of experiential learningtheory in Experiencing English and Experiencing Business English by answering thefollowing three questions:1. What are the features of Experiencing English and Experiencing BusinessEnglish from the perspective of experiential learning theory? To what extent do thetwo coursebooks match the experiential learning theory?2. What are the major problems, if any, of Experiencing English and ExperiencingBusiness English from the perspective of experiential learning theory? What are thepossible reasons of the problems?3. What are the pedagogical implications of this study for the future developmentof experiential materials?The research data of this thesis were collected through questionnaires andteachers· interviews. Questionnaires were handed out to60students from HunanUniversity of Commerce who used Experiencing English, and28students fromUniversity of International Business and Economics (UIBE) and48students fromHunan University of Commerce who used Experiencing Business English toinvestigate the degree of satisfaction from six characteristics of ELT. Inte rviews wererespectively done on2and3teachers from Foreign Economic and Trade Universityand Hunan University of Commerce respectively to investigate their ideas andsuggestions on these books through their teaching process. Through the analysis ofsurvey data and evaluation,, this thesis concludes as follows:1. From the perspective of ELT, Experiencing English and Experiencing BusinessEnglish both reflect the six characteristics of ELT more comprehensively. They adaptto the new requirement for the English talents in the background of globalization, andmake a positive attempt to current English textbooks. The proposition of learningbusiness English from experiential learning is different from traditional Englishmaterials, and the teaching approach is divergent from traditional English teaching.The purpose of the book is to experience English, cultivate English talents andimprove the ability to use English for communication in practice. 2. For the analysis of questionnaires and teachers· interviews, the problems ofExperiencing English are the gap in grading, unsuitable explanations of notes andunaccomplished teaching expectation. The causes for these problems are the imprecisecompilation and traditional teaching concepts. While Experiencing Business Englishshould improve on the language points, content arrangement and teacher·s professionalaccomplishments due to the lack of needs analysis and teachers· resource， which areconcluded from the research.Taking the research findings as the basis, this thesis believes that future experiencingEnglish materials should pay more attention to the learners· needs, improve theprofessional quality of English teachers and remove the influence of traditionalteaching concepts and exam-oriented tendency. Guided by the experiential learningtheory, experiential English materials should try to match the needs of teaching andcultivation at the same time. This thesis hopes to help compilers to write more andbetter experiential English coursebooks.