An Empirical Study Of Classroom Environment Of College English Listening And Speaking—From The Perspective Of Flipped Classroom

Since the rise of flipped classroom in America in 2011,it has been applied into the practical teaching more and more.This new teaching pedagogy overturns the traditional teaching mode “teacher's teaching + students' homework” into “self-learning before class+ collaboration and exploration in classroom”.It flips both teacher's and students' roles and provides a new insight into improving the learning efficiency.With the further reforms in higher education,class hours of College English Listening and Speaking have decreased significantly,which makes the formerly-existing problems such as limited time for practicing oral English in class,students' inadequate accumulation of pre-class language in-put,students' inadequate language out-put in class,inefficient class interactions between students,and inefficient class interactions between teacher and students,etc.become more outstanding.Correspondingly,the classroom environment cannot be very good.Flipped classroom pedagogy in College English Listening and Speaking can not only help students finish their self-learning and accumulate related language in-put before class,but also can provide more time and chances for students to have more practice of English and to internalize the learned knowledge.Hence,the more effective student--student interactions and teacher-student interactions are to be achieved,which makes the improvement of classroom environment become possible.Considering the advantages of flipped classroom and problems confronting College English Listening and Speaking,Wuhan University of Science and Technology has launched a flipped classroom pilot reform in College English Listening and Speaking class since the autumn of 2014.The reform involves a total of 10 teachers and 64 classes among the 2014 non-English major students.This study is a part of the pilot reform,in which 40 classes are selected as the subjects.We adopt the method of questionnaire and interview,and use the SPSS 21 to do the descriptive statistics and the independent sample T-tests to find out whether the influence of the flipped classroom on College English Listening and Speaking exists the classroom difference and proficiency difference.The research result shows that the flipped classroom pedagogy has exerted both positive and negative influence on the classroom environment of College English Listening and Speaking.Compared with the non flipped classroom,the classroom environment of top10 classes is significantly influenced by the flipped classroom,which mainly reflected in Student's Cooperation,Classroom Involvement,and the Classroom Psychological Atmosphere.However,the influence on classroom environment of bottom10 classes by the flipped classroom is not obvious.These classes' perceptions of Student's Collaboration,Task Orientation,Personality Characteristics,Equality and Classroom Involvement in classroom environment are not as good as the non flipped classroom in bottom 10 classes.Under the flipped classroom,different scores of students have different perception of College English Listening and Speaking classroom environment.For students whose scores are in middle level interval(70-79),their perception of classroom environment nearly has no difference.For students' score in the interval in 80-89,their perception of classroom environment has positive change obviously.In 90-100 interval,students may perceive the classroom environment improvement mostly and widely.The perception of classroom environment may also change obviously among the students in 0-69,but the change is negative.Compared with the students in 60-69,the students in 0-59 may perceive the bad change of the classroom environment deeper and wider.Two suggestions are put forward for teachers teaching College English Listening and Speaking.They are as follows: 1.Teachers who adopt flipped classroom pedagogy should take students' class difference into consideration.In good classes or top classes,students have better command of English and are more capable of self-learning,so tasks assigned to them,both in-class and after-class can be more diverse and challenging.This will help them more improve their language proficiency as well as their internalizing of the learned knowledge.For poor classes,especially the bottom classes,teachers should make some adjustments in assigning the tasks.The tasks can be less challenging and more helpful to arouse the students' interest and to build their confidence.In addition,in class,teachers can allot more time for interpreting the difficult points and answering questions from the students.By helping to remove the students' learning barriers,a more cooperative and interactive learning environment will be obtained.2.In flipped classroom,teachers should also take the individual difference into consideration.For good students,especially top students,teachers can offer them more challenging tasks.For students with poor English proficiency,the teacher should offer them more support and encouragement.More understanding for them and more communication with them are also necessary.Only by getting rid of their anxiety,worry and pressure can they take more active part in the classroom activities,which ultimately helps to improve the classroom environment effectively.