| Although progress has been achieved in English language teaching (ELT) in China during the past two decades, the fruits are far from satisfactory. In the course of pursuing further progress, many teachers begin to shift their attention from themselves to students. It is realized that students are the ones who play the key role in foreign language teaching and learning, and more concerns shown to individual students during the teaching process will ensure a higher efficiency. However, the practice of student-centred English is challenging both to the teacher and to the students, as both parties are so much influenced by the teacher-centred tradition that they are not fully prepared to play their fresh roles in the new trend. This dissertation aims to explore, by means of an action research, the practicability of student-centred English teaching in a nonTEnglish-major class.Chapter one serves as a brief introduction of this dissertation, including the features of traditional ELT in China and the necessity of shifting focus to the students. The teacher-centred, grammar-based, and test-oriented features of traditional ELT havenegative effects on the teaching efficiency. With the change of the social need as well as the variation of people's view on the nature of language and language learning, the purpose of ELT is not to enable language learners to read and translate, as was the case over two decades ago, but to equip them with communicative competence and to teach them how to learn a foreign language. The structure of this dissertation is also introduced in this chapter.Chapter two gives a review of some aspects of student-centred instruction such as its theoretical bases, its implication, and its pedagogical meaning in the language curriculum. Both constructivist theories of learning, including Piaget's theory of cognitive development and Vygotsky's social cognition model, and adult learning theory provide the theoretical background of the development of student-centred instruction. Different people have tried to give a definition to student-centredness. What is especially worth noticing is that student-centredness is not an "all-or-nothing concept", but a "continuum from relatively less to relatively more learner-centered". So the extent of students' involvement may vary in different cases. In a language curriculum, student-centred instruction contains the same elements of planning, implementation and evaluation as in traditional curriculum, but a student-centred curriculum is characterized by collaborative efforts between teachers and students. What should be done in the three stages of a student-centred language curriculum is discussed in detail in the last part of this chapter.Chapter three analyses the obstacles that are unfavourable to the application of student-centred ELT in China. Firstly, the social context in China is disadvantageous. Secondly, the deep-rooted teacher-centred tradition has led to the unpreparedness of both the teacher and the students, and the lack of student-centred teaching material as well. In addition, the large class size, which is common among non-English-major students, gives rise to difficulty in individualizing language learning. Only if ways to overcome these obstacles are developed can student-centred ELT be carried out smoothly.Chapter four gives a detailed account of the process of the action research done by the author in his local class. The meaning and rationale of action research is presented in the beginning of this chapter. Then, after introducing the background to this particular action research, the procedures of problem identifying, planning, action, observation andreflection, which are supposed to be the elements of an action research cycle, are strictly followed one by one. Being unsystematic has been identified to be the major problem existing in the first round of student-centred English teaching. Accordingly, a plan has been made to pursue student-centred English teaching in a systematic way in the second round practice. And specific meas... |
PDF Full Text Request