Collaborative Action Research In College English Teaching

College English is a compulsory course in Chinese universities. It has always been a problem as to how to improve College English teaching quality so that our target learners can meet the demand in fostering listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating skills. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to improve College English teachers' quality. So the problem of teacher development has become the key to successful reforms in College English teaching.Since 1947 when Kurt Lewin initiated the concept of action research, there has been a general belief in education field that action research is an effective way for teacher development, which serves as a bridge combining theory with practice. Stenhouse (1979) advocated the notion of "teacher-researcher", and thought that action research differed from traditional research or qualitative research in teachers' participation in research. Later, collaborative action research is put forward, which suggests that teachers involved in action research can do research in groups rather than individual and isolated research. However, the focus in China is mainly put on the introduction to the theory and little is done in practice. The author tends to hold the view that collaborative action research approach offers the key to solve the problem of combining research and teaching in order to achieve teacher development.Therefore, from November 2004 to December 2005, a research team made up of four colleagues and the author implemented a collaborative action research project among Mathematics Majors enrolled in 2004 at Huangshan University. As listening teaching is always regarded as a weak point in College English teaching, the purpose of the project is to improve students' listening skills as well as to promote teachers' professional development in College English teaching. A seven-step sequential model of collaborative action research is adopted for the present research project. These seven steps are: 1) Formulation of a Focus and Start of Research; 2) Data Collection and Analysis; 3) Taking Actions; 4) Further Data Collection and Reflections; 5) Fine-tuning the Plans; 6) Reporting the Results; 7) New Problem Arising and New Round of Research.During the project, research team members often communicate with each other through discussion and e-mails, trying to solve the problems arising in the research, then reflect on the effects after taking actions. By comparison with the data collected at the beginning, students are found to be more motivated to learn independently with...