An Investigation Into The Application Of CLT In College English Teaching Of China

In recent years, educational innovations in English education have received considerable attention in China. Since the early 1980s, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as an innovative teaching method has been accepted in China as a valid and indeed recommended approach to teaching English. New teaching materials have been introduced to meet the different needs of various kinds of schools throughout China. In the new curricula, the goal of English teaching is to develop the learners'communicative competence in English through meaningful drills and communicative activities.Administers of educational departments are trying their efforts to provide opportunities for English teachers'training and retraining. As a result of this training, many teachers have come to realize that English teaching is not equal to the grammar teaching. The traditional grammar-based examinations are being changed to better forms in CLT. Spoken English test have been already added to CET4 test for the students who can score high.However, the anticipated levels have not been achieved as designed. This paper examines possible causes for this situation by questioning the major protagonists in CLT: the teachers and their students.This research reviews the historical background of CLT and analyzes the research situation of the CLT in the world. It investigates and analyzes the status quo of the application of CLT by questionnaires sent to the English teachers and students at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and Hubei University. Responses were received from thirty two teachers and one hundred and forty students.From the data thus obtained, it is believed that there are various characteristics in the application of this approach in China:The teachers'training in CLT is so inadequate that they do not have sufficient confidence in their own proficiency to put it in practice in the classroom. They adhere to the traditional teacher's role, which draws on a teacher-centered teaching method. So even though the content of the textbooks and the course design in the college English teaching become more and more communicative, the teachers still pay more attention to grammar teaching. Students have little chance and little time to do the pair/group work in the classes. What's more, an overly rigid examination system, failing to test students'communicative competence, is a further barrier to the proper application of CLT.