An Empirical Study Of Project-based Approach To Oral English Teaching

With China's access to the WTO and the economic globalization, China has been keeping an increasing contact with the world. As a result, China needs talents with higher oral English abilities in all walks of life. So far, most oral English teaching has been based on traditional teaching approach. That is, the so called PPP (presentation-practice-production) approach has been implemented in classroom teaching. But the weakest point of this method is that the students are forced to learn English passively. They just learn and recite what the teachers have taught but don't know how to use what they have learnt. The students can't use it flexibly so that they lose their autonomy in this learning environment and feel difficult to stimulate their interest in learning. Therefore, it is difficult for the traditional teaching approach to meet the needs of today's students' language proficiency and self-learning ability. To improve students' oral English has become an important teaching objective in College English, so it is imperative to explore a new oral classroom teaching model.Project-based learning is one possible solution. The model of project-based oral English is to carry out oral activities based on student-centered, practice-centered and project-centered learning. Project-based approach focuses on developing students' learning strategies, helps students become autonomous learners, increases their motivation in English learning and improves their various learning abilities. PBA was introduced to China in the late 20th century. For more than one decade onward, researches on PBA at home extends from introduction to content, significance, theoretical background and application of PBA, and even learners' attitude toward PBA. However, most researches are confined to the primary and secondary school teaching and a small part of the higher education relevant to polytechnic students. Project-based approach is far from systematic in English teaching and hence further research on PBA is necessary. On this background, the present study aims to explore the application of project-based approach to oral English class so as to stimulate students' interest in learning and to develop their learning ability accordingly. To be more exact, the thesis based on constructivism theory attempts to make an empirical study of project-based approach to oral English teaching. The research questions are as follows:(1) Does the PBA is better than the traditional approach in oral English class?(2) Can the PBA improve students' ability in oral English class effectively?(3) Can the PBA stimulate students'autonomous learning?The methodologies in present research mainly include literature reading, comparative experiment and questionnaire survey. Among them, a semester-long empirical experiment is conducted in two classes from the Medical College of Jiujiang University randomly, the experimental class and the other is control class, respectively. Project-based approach is adopted in experimental class, while traditional teaching approach is adopted in control class. The pre-test and the post-test using the two sets of College English Test-Spoken English Test (CET-SET) are employed in the two classes before and after the experiment is made. In addition, a questionnaire survey for the experimental class is carried out to investigate the students' oral English proficiency and their interest & attitudes towards the PBA at the beginning and at the end of the semester. The results of tests and a questionnaire are analyzed with the help of SPSS 13.0. According to the empirical data analysis, we find:Firstly, the PBA effectively helps students improve their oral English. Before the experiment, the statistics (Table 4.1) shows that there is no significant difference in oral English level between two classes (T=-0.657, P=0.513>0.05). After the experiment, the results of independent samples T-test (Table 4.2) indicate that oral English level in the experimental class is higher than that in the control class (T=-2:084, P=.041<.05). In order to examine the three aspects of the rating scale of the CET-SET, independent samples T-tests are used between the pre-test and post-test of each class. Table 4.3 shows students have improved their oral English in accuracy & range (T=-2.373, P=.020<.05) and flexibility & appropriacy (T=-2.238, P=.028<.05).Secondly, the experiment reveals that the PBA is better than the traditional approach in oral English teaching. According to Table 4.5, the PBA can help improve students learning motivation and initiative(T=-8.499, P=.001<.05).Thirdly, Table 4.5 shows the project-based learning model effectively promotes leaner autonomy (T=-5.794, P=.010<.05) and develops student's practical ability(T=-24.040, P=.000<.05).The findings from this study have four pedagogical implications:(1) Changing the traditional teaching approach plays an active role in promoting college English teaching reform. Creating a new student-centered teaching method and strengthening oral teaching will encourage students to increase their language input and output and analytical skills in order to improve their linguistic communicative competence.(2) Positive attitude towards learning is an important factor to enhance the learners' English proficiency. The attitude of the learners is a learning tendency in understanding, mood, and emotional behavior of English learning, which has a major impact on English learning process and the final achievement. (3) In oral English classroom, it is good for teachers to adopt different teaching methods to become creative teachers. How to put the optimal teaching approach in practice is the core of creative teaching.(4) Different teaching environments bring direct effects on students' intellectual development and motivation. Differences of the teaching model, teaching methods and teaching means in different classes will lead to different teaching results.The empirical study reveals the PBA has a great bearing on oral English teaching. The study shows, to a large extent, the PBA breaks through confinement by the teacher-centered, curriculum-centered and classroom-centered traditional teaching model, and herefore helps develop the students' improve their oral English and communicative competence. However, the sample size was just confined to 74 students and is supposed not to reflect the actual situation in the secondary level universities like Jiujiang University. A further study is therefore suggested in the ensuing research to be conducted.