The Necessity And Feasibility Of Interdisciplinary Approach To Foreign Language Education In China

In China, foreign language (FL) education has absorbed substantial social investment and educational resource, and thus has the possibility and responsibility to accommodate more educational functions; yet it doesn't seem to serve the purpose well. China is under heavy pressure of educational reform; college English teaching also needs reform both for intrinsic and external reasons. Interdisciplinary education has had a long history abroad and is now widely recognized and implemented in developed countries. This thesis is intended to introduce an integrative model of interdisciplinary approach to China's college English teaching, and discuss its necessity and feasibility. This paper is divided into six chapters excluding a preface.In chapter 1, reasons are given for the reform of Chinese education at large, and the rationale is that since FL education is an integral part of Chinese education system, it shall also be reformed for similar reasons. And through analysis, foreign language education is found to have plentiful resources to fulfill many educational functions which cannot be otherwise fulfilled without seriously affecting the existing balance of educational design and institutions. .In chapter 2, the benefits and necessity of interdisciplinary approach to curriculum development and course design have been discussed in length, and the paucity of such practice and effort in China should solicit the attention of Chinese educators who care about the competitiveness of China's educational products at all.In chapter 3, typical approaches and syllabuses of FL teaching have been summarized, and the task-based and content-based approaches are emphasized for their usefulness in developing interdisciplinary approaches to FL education, which are surprisingly little discussed in almost all the major works on curriculum development and syllabus design in FL education.In Chapter 4, interdisciplinary approach to FL curriculum has been further defined; the intrinsic needs of FL education, such as demands of labor market and professional orientation, learners' needs, acquisition of FL proficiency and development of cognitive competence, and the necessary of integration at different levels, are explained in detail to further prove the necessity and value of this approach; meanwhile, the feasibility for implementing this approach is verified by the enumeration of some important factors such as the flexibility of foreign language teaching (FLT) in selecting subject matters and teaching methods; compatible cognitive competence and raised language proficiency of the learners; the availability of theoretical frameworks and organizational techniques , the interdisciplinary nature of existing curriculum of FL education and the availability of interdisciplinary course books for higher FL learning.In Chapter 5, an experiment on interdisciplinary approach to FL curriculum for English majors has been reported, described, analyzed, and interpreted, and the findings are dominantly pointing to the feasibility of this approach in the Chinese context of higher FL education for English majors.Finally, it is concluded that it is worthwhile and necessary to try interdisciplinary approaches to FL education in China, which is promised a positive prospect for development and a wide range of application to other educational spheres.