The Application Of The Comparative Method To College English Teaching

This thesis is a tentative endeavor to employ scientifically and systematically the English-Chinese Comparative Method (the ECCM) into college English teaching so as to help English learners overcome negative transfer from their native language and learn more idiomatic English. Its theoretical basis derives from research achievements of scholars at home and abroad on the method.At the very beginning of 20^th century, linguists began to compare English and Chinese and gain an insight into both the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the two languages. The early contributors involve Ma Jianzhong, Yan Fu, Wang Li, etc. It is their great efforts and findings that establish a theoretical framework and practical foundation for the later study and application in teaching. Since 1970s, linguists and foreign language specialists employ gradually the principles and findings of comparison of English and Chinese to guide foreign language teaching. As Xiao Liming indicates, our research aims to looking for the similarities and dissimilarities between English and Chinese so as to approach the ideal principles and methods in language teaching (2002:4). According to Wei Zhicheng, the ECCM can be used in two aspects of foreign language teaching. This first one is to promote the Chinese teaching for the foreigners. The second one is to satisfy the demand in China to improve English teaching. To be more systematic and scientific, language teaching expertise propose the principles that the method should comply with. (1) The synchronic comparison should be combined with the diachronic one. (2) The macroscopic comparison should be combined with the microscopic one. (3) Comparing dissimilarities as well as similarities between English and Chinese is both necessary.The main subject which has the closest relation with the ECCM is Contrastive Analysis (CA), which was one of the most popular methods in applied linguistics in the twentieth century. The two methods draw a synchronic comparison on the similarities and dissimilarities of the target language and the native language in foreign language teaching. The aim of CA is to bring out points of similarities and differences and thus to predict and explain learner's difficulties and errors in second language acquisition and to provide basis for the selection and grading of teaching material and for the organization and designing of syllabuses.The main causes for application of the ECCM to college English teaching is the first language transfer in second language acquisition. Language transfer has been a central issue in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and language teaching for atleast a century. Although within the last few decades, its importance in second language learning has been reassessed several times, in 1980s, a more balanced perspective has emerged in which the role of transfer is acknowledged and in which transfer is seen to interact with a host of other factors in ways not yet fully understood. Terence Odlin (1989) names language transfer as cross-linguistic influence in language learning. In Language Transfer, he documents the historical development of the concept of language transfer, explores the role of transfer in discourse, semantics, syntax, phonology, and writing systems, and examines the way language transfer interacts with linguistic as well as cultural, social, and personal factors in second language learning and use. Evidence for transfer in all aspects of language—phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics is now abundant. Furthermore, there is recognition of the fact that transfer may not always manifest itself as errors, but also as avoidance, overuse and facilitation. The author of present thesis also manages to collect a number of cases from class teaching to illustrate how L1 (Chinese) influences L2 (English) learning on thought patterns, discourse patterns, syntax and lexical use.In addition, the author conducts a test to examine whether English learners themselves are conscious of interference from their native language or not? The subjects for the test are 120 Chinese students majoring in international trade, law and administration in Wuhan University of Science and Technology in their first year. The test consists of two parts. The first part is to read a composition written by a second year student of English major and give their assessments on it within ten minutes. The second part is to revise 10 chinglish sentences chosen from Joan Pinrham's book, The Translator's Guide to Chinglish (2000:32). The results of the test show that English learners are inevitably affected by their native language.How to conquer interference from the native language and culture is a great challenge for educators. Linguists and foreign language specialists are convinced that a systematic comparison of the target language with the native language will help language learners to reduce influence from their native language. The famous linguist Lu Shuxiang (1982:5) indicates: "By comparison only, the characteristics of Chinese and English are revealed and easier to learn and teach." Lado (1957:1), at the beginning of his influential work, Linguistics across Cultures, quotes words of Fries: The best textbook is like this— its standing point should describe scientifically the second language learned by students; On the other hand, it provides a paralleled description of the first language of students and compare them attentively." So, it is utterly necessary for teachers to make a systematic comparison of English and Chinese in their English teaching.How to best put the ECCM into teaching is an urgent task facing college English teachers and also the core of the research scope of this thesis. In order to make the method accessible and effective, the teachers should make full use of the textbook available to implement the ECCM to their teaching. The author gives an introduction to college English textbooks and puts forwards some practical suggestions for how to integrate the ECCM with students' textbooks. The techniques and strategies can be specified as follows. Firstly, the main English discourse patterns in students' textbooks should be compared with corresponding Chinese ones. The thesis focuses on comparing the different strategies of English and Chinese in writing a thank-you letter and an argumentation. Secondly, the main English syntactical structures in students' textbooks should be compared with corresponding Chinese ones. Thirdly, while teaching vocabulary, it is utterly necessary for teachers to compare the associative meanings of lexicons in English and Chinese. Fourthly, the cultural differences of English and Chinese also need to be drawn an elaborate comparison. Lecturing on the vocabulary rich in cultural connotations and imparting cultural background necessary are two of the effective channels. Fifthly, the language knowledge and competence that students need in authentic communication greatly exceeds that covered in any courses. So, the theoretical analysis should be integrated with the practical activities both in class and out of class. Teachers should try to find ways which are not confined to formal listening, speaking, reading and writing on the target language and culture in the textbooks, and give support to students in developing relevant out-of-class activities.From September 2004, the author began to select one of the two classes to instruct in the ECCM. In order to identify whether the method is more effective or not, the author chooses students' writing scores in the final test in July 2005 to conduct a comparison. All the statistic results show the advantages of the ECCM, which is more helpful in developing language proficiency of learners. It will make us more aware that the application of this method to college English teaching will be necessary as well as valuable. And, the method needs further to be developed and perfected in the teaching practice.