A Probe Into The Application Of Cognitive-Communicative Viewpoint To College English Teaching

Foreign language teaching (FLT) has formed three schools (the cognitive school, the associative school and the comprehensive school) during its development. Through reading a lot of books, the author of this thesis has a systematic knowledge about the backgrounds, theoretical bases and essential principles of language teaching. It can be found out that each school has its merits and demerits. The cognitive school focuses on the linguistic structures, but does not pay enough attention to the construction of communicative competence. The associative school lays emphasis on the use of language and the cultivation of communicative competence, but pays less attention to the significance of linguistic competence in the cultivation of students'communicative competence. At present, there appears the viewpoint of comprehensiveness, which develops advantages and avoids disadvantages of the cognitive school and the associative school.Based on the above researches, the author realizes that the teaching approach based on psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics is accorded with our situation. That is the cognitive-communicative viewpoint which combines cognition with communication in FLT. Then the author takes syllabus designing, textbook editing, classroom teaching of College English and CET-4 as examples. These examples will be set to prove that how cognitive-communicative viewpoint directs the development of College English teaching and how it is applied to college English teaching.Syllabus design is the foundation of textbook edition, classroom teaching and evaluation. College English Curriculum Requirements points out,"[t]he objective of College English is to develop students'ability to use English in an all-round way."It is to develop students'ability to use linguistic knowledge for efficient communication; to develop students'learning strategies and intercultural communication, especially in listening and speaking; and at the same time to enhance their ability to study independently and improve their cultural quality.Textbook gives a guarantee of the realization of CECR. College English combines the cognitive principle with the communicative principle. Every unit has a theme and topics are closely related to the college students'life, which make communication in English possible. Exercises in College English are designed for strengthening students'linguistic knowledge and enhancing their ability to use the language through interaction and task-based approaches, which are used to develop students'cognitive structures.Classroom teaching is the concrete reflection of CECR. The author takes Unit Two in Book One as an example and proposes a teaching thought of"activation of cognition—offering tasks—communicative application—study and induce—deepening of application"so as to develop students'ability to use English in an all-round way.Testing is a measure of the embodiment of the teaching requirements. In New CET-4(2006), the first part (15%) is writing a composition. Listening Comprehension accounts for 35% in the whole test. And in Reading Comprehension, there are fasting reading, vocabulary choice (10%) and traditional reading (25%). In synthetic test (15%) includes error correction or cloze. It is clear that new CET-4 adds more subjective items which test students'cognitive and communicative abilities.We have conducted investigations into four levels ranging from College English Curriculum Requirements, College English (New Edition), classroom teaching plan to CET-4. The studies at four levels have proved that our College English teaching is implementing the cognitive-communicative viewpoint.