The Text-based Approach To College English Teaching

In 2004, the Ministry of Education made a new Requirements for College English Teaching whose standards for learner's competence are much higher than those in College English Teaching Syllabus. Its essence rests on the development of communicative competence. Under this situation, the importance of teacher-training is increasing.Compared with the characteristics of five teaching approaches related to college English teaching in Chinese context , namely, the Grammar-translation approach, the Direct approach, the Situational approach, the Audio-lingual approach, and the Communicative approach, the Text-based approach has clear advantages over the other approaches in achieving the teaching and learning goal of improving the college students'communicative competence of English use.The main characteristics of the Text-based approach include: the Text-based approach rises from the theory of text linguistics; it is believed that the functions of language are often best understood in a text environment; the relationship between grammatical form and communicative function is central to a text view of language; all the five skills of language, namely, listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating are of the same importance; the teacher is the instructor and the learners are the center of classroom activities.Text linguistics focuses on language in use, in how real people use real language. Among many text linguistic theories, the thesis selects those related to the seven standards of textuality put forward by de Beaugrande and Dressler in their co-work Introduction to Text Linguistics in 1981. These theories are practical and systematic for college English teaching. The seven standards are cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. For each standard, the theories related to it are introduced first and then come the implications of those theories for college English teaching with illustrations.It is firmly believed that further research in this field will be of theoretical and educational significance. We hope to stimulate thoughts on the Text-based approach and therefore to use the approach in teaching practice to help improve the learners'communicative competence and meet the Requirements for College English Teaching.