| The purpose of this paper is to apply language awareness approaches into English majors'class, and to promote students'oral English proficiency through raising language awareness (or consciousness raising)."Language awareness"is a hot topic in recent language teaching, especially in foreign language teaching. Language awareness (CR) refers to the development in learners of an enhanced consciousness of and sensitivity to the forms and functions of language (Donmall, 1985). Language awareness (CR) is a mental attribute which develops through paying motivated attention to language in use, and which enables language learners to gradually gain insights into how languages work (Brian Tomlinson, 2003). The approaches of language awareness are developed under the background of foreign, second and native language learning. Firstly, language awareness was used to cultivate teachers'language awareness, and now is applied to classroom teaching broadly. As a pedagogic approach, it aims to help learners to gain such insights; as an educational goal, it emphasizes that learners can deal with language obstacles and reach a high level of understanding and use.The development of our society and great changes with other countries cause the increasing demand of English learners with oral proficiency. The requirements for foreign language talents have changed. They should have applied ability, independently operational ability, creative ability, multi-thinking ability and self-developing ability (Dai Weidong, 1999). In such a reality, foreign language teaching faces new problems and challenges. Until now, many students in universities still get high marks in exams, but can not speak English smoothly, which doesn't satisfy and adapt to the need of our society. Therefore, the significance of oral English is obvious, which acquires English learners to have high qualities of oral English proficiency.Since 1970s, scholars, such as E. W. Hawkins, Donmall, advocated"Language awareness movement". Later language educational circle made broad and deep researches in order to explore the role of LA for foreign language or second language teaching. On the complementary point of linguistics and cognitive learning theories, Sinclair (1985), Carl James (1991), Christopher Brumfit (1991), Guy Merchant (1991), Gillian Donmall (1991), Schmidt (1991), Mike Scott (1991),David Little (1991), Norman Fariclough (1992), Leo van Lire (1995), etc. have made more investigations. However, this aspect of researches is few in foreign language teaching of our country.This research adopts examinations, questionnaire, recording and interviews and applies theories of language awareness into intensive reading class for English majors in BeiHua University, with the aim of investigating new approaches to oral English teaching in order to improve English majors'oral English proficiency. During one term practice, language awareness approaches make students'oral English improve and their initiative and activity also increase.This paper consists of five chapters.In Chapter 1, it introduces the background of choosing this subject, points out the necessity and importance of cultivating students'language awareness in order to improve their oral English proficiency, and the organization of the thesis is briefly presented.In Chapter 2, it has literature review of theories of language awareness. The theories and researches relevant to this study will be reviewed. First, it introduces definitions of language awareness and the domains of language awareness. Second, the theoretical basis of this study—cognitive psychology and theories of language learning will also be explored. Then the principles, objectives, procedures and key features of language awareness activities will be listed. And the relationships between language awareness and learner autonomy will be discussed. Finally, it will have a review of the existing researches on language awareness.In Chapter 3, it presents methodology of my research. The subject, instruments, procedures and methods are introduced. Research data are collected and analyzed through exams, questionnaire, recording, observations and interviews, etc., and it also lists the limitations of this research.In Chapter 4, results and discussions are made. It is proved that English majors' oral English proficiency is improved through cultivating their language awareness. Language awareness approaches influence students'affective factors, such as strengthening motivation, setting positive attitudes and lowering anxiety. They promote students'frequent practice and active speaking, foster students'various learning ability and lead to students'autonomous learning. They also increase opportunities to listen and produce English, produce greater learner-centeredness and learner direction in language classroom. And they create a positive learning environment, etc.In Chapter 5, it makes a conclusion. It summarizes the study, gives implications and it also makes recommendation for the possible future researches relevant to this study. In other words, in the process of foreign language teaching, teachers should pass knowledge to students, at the same time, try their best to cultivate students'language awareness. First of all, teachers should improve their own language awareness. Only when teachers have language awareness, can they help students set up language awareness. Only when teachers and students both have language awareness, can English teaching and learning be improved greatly. While students as the center of the class should overcome anxiety and nervousness, participate classroom learning actively, set self-confidence, at last form the habit of learning oral English autonomously.This research is a good try to improve English majors'oral proficiency in the practice of oral English teaching. It has a certain theoretical and practical meaning to our contemporary oral English teaching. |
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