A Research Of Experiential Mode Applied To College English Listening And Speaking Teaching Of Art Majors

College English teaching is being reformed constantly in recent years, but less attention is paid to Art Majors. Art Majors is an indispensable part of the university,and they need to participate in “Practical English Test for Colleges” Level A and Level B. Therefore, their English teaching can’t be ignored. Although listening and speaking course has been listed in the college English teaching all the time, it still remains learning grammars, words, phrases, sentences, which doesn’t meet the requirements of listening and speaking teaching. Neither the ability of speaking and listening skills nor the interests in English learning is improved. In order to change this situation, this thesis applies the Experiential Mode to Art Majors’ English teaching of listening and speaking, so as to change the students’ attitudes and improve their interests in their English listening and speaking. The thesis includes the following questions:(1) Can the Experiential Teaching Mode improve classroom interaction and arouse Art Majors’ enthusiasm in English listening and speaking?(2) Is the Experiential Teaching Mode more effective on improving Art Majors’ speaking and listening ability than Traditional Teaching Mode?(3) What illumination will the teachers find in the English speaking and listening teaching with applying Experiential Teaching Mode?The thesis uses Constructivism Theory, Classroom Interaction Theory and Situational Context Theory as its theoretical foundations. The Experiential Mode proposes that teachers’ teaching and students’ learning are based on the combination of acquired knowledge and new knowledge. The whole class needs the interactions between teachers and students. Meanwhile, teachers have to create a proper Englishlearning environment for students. This thesis adopts both the qualitative and the quantitative methods. And it selects 80 students of two Art classes of 2012 in Shenyang Normal University to conduct empirical research. One is EG and the other is CG. The EG uses Experiential Mode and CG uses traditional teaching mode.Before the experiment, 80 students are investigated by the questionnaires which aim at knowing the students’ English speaking and listening attitudes and willingness.Then, all the students take pre-test to show their English levels and their scores in the entrance examinations are also collected. During the experiment, classroom observation is used for recording students’ speaking and listening learning. Seven oral tests are conducted during the experiment. At the end of the experiment, all the students take the post-test and oral tests.The study lasts for three months. The data for the study are collected from the questionnaires, pre-test, post-test, entrance examination scores, classroom observation and oral tests of all the students. After a semester’s research, the conclusions are drawn as follows:(1) The Experiential Teaching Mode makes the classes more interesting. The Experiential Teaching Mode adopts multimedia, which makes more students participate in the classroom activities so as to increase classroom interaction. By the frequency using of Experiential Teaching Mode in English teaching of speaking and listening, more students are willing to communicate in English, thus increasing the motivation to learn English.(2) From classroom observation, students’ feedbacks and oral test scores, the students are willing to join in the classroom activities, and they make full use of the classroom time to practice speaking. Comparing with the students in traditional classroom, students in experimental group can get higher scores in both listening and speaking.(3) Experiential Teaching Mode is a new mode of classroom teaching, and it changes the drawbacks of traditional teaching in the classroom and injects more fresh blood into the classroom. In this kind of classroom, higher requirements are put forward for teachers. In addition to the professional knowledge of English,teachers should learn more extra-curricular knowledge to meet the students’ learning needs. At the same time, this is a process of continuous improvement in teachers’ comprehensive quality.This research finds that the Experiential Mode facilitates Art Majors’ improvement in English listening and speaking. The design of classroom activities fits for students’ needs so as to mobilize the students’ learning interests, which reflects a classroom teaching of students-centered and teachers are guiders. For the English listening and speaking class, teachers should try to select the authentic materials for students, so as to arouse the students’ interests in English learning;teachers have to give students more opportunities to express their views in the classroom and encourage them to take part in the interaction of classroom so teachers should mobilize the students’ enthusiasm as much as possible. Therefore,this research provides the teaching of College English listening and speaking for Art Majors with reference.