Interactive Strategies For The Large-size College English Class

Interaction is important in the EFL teaching. Interactive Teaching Approach aims at fostering student autonomous awareness, creative ability as well as communicative ability to use the target language. It takes the students as the center of the class, changes the teacher's position in the classroom and creates an equal non-threatening classroom atmosphere. It can also incerese classroom dynamics and cultivate students'comunicative competence. Therefore, the research on interactive teaching seems to be very important. Many foreign researchers have conducted remarkable theoretical research about the importance of implementing interaction in language classroom and its pedagogic significance. In China, however, there are not enough researchers at present who can propose some satisfactory measures and suggestions that can help improve effective interaction in the large size the College English class.In 2007, the National Ministry of Education issued the new requirements for College English Teaching. According to the new requirements, the chief aim of College English teaching is to develop students'ability to use English in a well-rounded way, especially in listening and speaking, so that in their future studies and careers as well as social interactions they will be able to study independently and have general cultural awareness so as to meet the needs of China's social development and international exchanges. It can be drawn from the requirement that much higher demands were called for toward English teachers and college students because of the development of society. In order to know well about College English teaching situation, English Group in Higher College Foreign Language Committee in 2001 conducted a survey about English teaching for over 160 colleges and universities. The study found that more than 50 percent of the College English classes have over 60 students. In the large-size English class, it is difficult for the teachers to hold interactive or communicative classroom activities. By utilizing questionnaires and conducting interview, the researcher tries to find out: whether or not there is a need to be interactive in the large size College English classroom from the views of both teachers and students; what difficulties and expectations teachers and students have in the process of implementing the interactive strategies in large-size classes. The researcher then made some field studies by observing some College English classes to find out the methodological problems and deficiencies concerning the employment of interactive activities in the large-size English class. By classroom observation, the researcher compared the situation of learning enthusiasm, classroom dynamics and learning motivation for students in both the control class and the experimental class. In the experiment, two tests including a proficiency test and an oral English test were given to both the control class and the experimental class. By using SPSS16.0, some comparision was made between the results.Through the combination of the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the research results show that interactive strategies in large-size class can provide more effective ways to help learners improve their English proficiency. Some main strategies have been put forward that can promote interaction in the classroom, such as: 1) creating a relaxed communicative learning environment; 2) improving the quality of questioning; 3) employing more group work activities; 4) rearranging the seating of the students. The realization of interaction can promote the learners'ability of effective learning to a large extent. In practice, the present study may promote College English teaching innovation and help English language teachers find ways to solve the difficulties they may meet when conducting interactive activities in the large-size classes.