How To Upgrade The Effectiveness Of College English Classroom Teaching

China's English teaching has been"time-consuming and inefficient"(费时低效) (Dai,2001;Zhou,2010)since long. It is especially true when College English teaching is concerned. This problem is resulted from a variety of factors but may be most efficiently addressed from the perspective of College English teachers inside the classroom where teachers play a dominant role.Therefore, the current study, with the ultimate aim to upgrade the effectiveness of College English classroom teaching, is limited to what is under the control of the teachers. It adopts such tools as literature survey, questionnaires, classroom observations, interviews and case study. With these tools, preliminary investigation is conducted on teachers and learners from five universities of different types. Questionnaires are administered to 95 in-service College English teachers and 663 undergraduate non-English majors from the five universities in Hebei province, Bejing and Shanghai municipalities. It was found that the aspects affecting teaching effectiveness can be summarized in the following four respects:1) Learner education in terms of constructing learner belief system and learning strategy training has not received due attention, whereas much emphasis is put on content-teaching, leaner-centeredness being no more than a slogan;2) English teaching at middle schools and at colleges are poorly connected with each other in all respects;3) Little attention is paid to learning the target language itself in order to obtain a good command of it, instead, passing exams seems to be the greatest concern of all;4) Teacher reflections on teaching practice and intervention with the learning process have been neglected, which greatly hinders the effectiveness of teaching.With regard to the above findings, the whole research is hoped to prove the following hypothesis:1) Teaching philosophy differs from person to person and affects teaching practice in many ways; 2) Teachers'effort in learner education in terms of reconstructing learner belief system, undertaking learning strategy training, intervening with the learning process significantly helps to upgrade teaching effectiveness;3) An aesthetic taste added to teaching practice could help promote learner's motivation and refresh their interest in learning;4) Reflective teaching by means of getting learner to notice, focusing on forms, stressing on repetitive loud reading, would work wonders in the effectiveness of teaching.From the literature survey conducted in this research, it can be seen that the effectiveness of language teaching was addressed in a rather discrete manner. For example, some studies were conducted either dealing with grammar teaching, or corrective feedback trying to see how effective these efforts may prove. Other studies such as those done by Chinese researchers approach to individual skills of either listening or writing in the pursuit of effectiveness. Little effort has been made to address College English classroom teaching as a whole in order to upgrade the effectiveness. Theories were based upon, but they have never been adopted within a coherent framework, where each theory is responsible for one aspect of teaching. The current research attempts to address the effectiveness of College English classroom teaching by constructing a new effective teaching model, based on what teachers are supposed to reflectively intervene with the learning process so that the anticipated goal of teaching effectiveness can be reached. On the basis of the analysis of the status quo of college English classroom teaching, this dissertation adopts the theory of reflective teaching, trying to exert teacher intervention on the learning process through which teaching effect is enhanced. Under the theoretical framework of reflective teaching, a new teaching model is constructed with the theories of noticing, focus on form, focus on meaning, ZPD included coherently as the supporting points. Detailed prescriptive remedies are offered in an attempt to deal with the causes to the ineffectiveness in teaching, supplemented with empirical case study.To sum up, the value of this study lies in the construction of a new teaching model that attempts to upgrade the effectiveness of teaching on the ideological level and practical level. The former focuses on the philosophy of'whole person'learner education, through which learner beliefs, learning strategy, learning psychology are reconstructed so that problems of learner preferences, learner attribution to failure and learner motivation be addressed and learners become cooperative, independent and reflective in their study. The latter is realized through teacher intervention with the learning process. For example, by training learners in their loud reading, adding an aesthetic taste to teaching, learners'interest can be refreshed and learning outcomes improved, hence the effectiveness of teaching can be upgraded.This dissertation consists of seven chapters. Chapter One is an introduction which tells the reader what makes the research necessary and how the research questions come into being, followed by a presentation of the research methodology, research goals and the value expected of the research, as well as a layout of the dissertation. Chapter Two is a literature review of the studies conducted by both Western experts in second or foreign language teaching and Chinese experts in College English teaching. Chapter Three provides a theoretic foundation of the current research, which includes the theory of reflective teaching, the noticing hypothesis, the theory of'focus on form', the theory of'focus on meaning', the theory of ZPD, based on which a conceptual teaching model is constructed. Chapter Four is diagnostically designed to identify the problems with both teaching and learning of College English and attempts to explain why these problems undermine the effectiveness of college English classroom teaching. Chapter Five is designed to be curative in that it offers a series of remedies for the factors affecting the effectiveness of college English classroom teaching. It puts emphasis on learner education, assuming that such factors as learners'belief system would profoundly affect their learning outcomes in either positive or negative way. Chapter Six is an extension of Chapter Five, with a case study designed to test the newly developed model of effective teaching. It is proved that the new model works better than the traditional teaching model in upgrading the effectiveness of teaching. Chapter Seven summarizes the major findings and the originalities of the current research, and concludes on the achievements and weaknesses of the whole research, with an attempt to orient the reader for further study.