Learners' Individual Differences And Individualized College English Teaching

The traditional way of college English teaching in China overemphasizes the teacher-centered mode and uniformity, neglecting students'initiative and individual differences. This directly leads to the low efficiency of English learning. In recent years, with the fast development of language learning theories, educational psychology, psycholinguistics and applied linguistics, the emphasis of English teaching is put on the research on language learners. The learner-centered approach and individualized teaching method have become the core of college English teaching.In January 3rd, 2004, Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education issued College English Curriculum Requirements (For Trial Implementation), which includes the new teaching concepts such as individualized teaching. These concepts are in accordance with theories that advocate individual differences, taking Cognitive Styles and Multiple Intelligences (MI) Theory for example. Therefore, college English teaching should be better redesigned and improved under the guidance of these theories.On the basis of college English teaching directions and educational theories, this thesis makes a research and analysis of the current college teaching situation. The research shows that the traditional way of English teaching neglects individual differences among learners and this teaching method cannot meet the requirement of college English teaching. This research being the background, the thesis studies the individual differences theories, with Cognitive Styles and MI Theory as the focus. An experiment is conducted in this thesis, with two English classes as the compared experimental subjects and the MI Theory as the theoretical foundation. Individualized grouping teaching method and traditional teaching method are applied to the two classes respectively. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the experiment show that in the process of English learning, there is a great importance of individual differences in learning. With individual differences theories as the basis and the experiment results as the support, this thesis introduces the viewpoint of individualized teaching. A detailed analysis is made on the concept as well as on how to apply it to college English teaching from the angles such as learners, teachers, teaching aids and assessment. The aim of this study is to provide some enlightenment to college English teaching.