The Study Of Bilingual Teaching, Its Current Situation And Prospects In Local Universities

Bilingual teaching has a long history in western countries. However, the Chinese-English bilingual teaching model in China is only at its early stage. It has been experimented mainly in some metropolitan primary schools and middle schools in recent years, while many schools copied the experiences and models of other counties, such as the immersion model, for the purpose of finding out an efficient way of improving English teaching. Along with China's entry into WTO and the constant deepening of the cooperation and exchange with the outside world, the state education department has recognized that colleges and universities should take more responsibilities for fostering the bilingual talents and in 2003, bilingual courses evaluation became one part of the assessment system of the teaching quality of college education. Since then, Bilingual teaching has been carried out in all universities around China and became an important part in higher education reform. Bilingual teaching is also considered as a bold attempt to remedy the current "time-consuming and inefficient" situation in English teaching and learning. But at the same time, we should know that bilingual teaching is not a mere teaching mode that teachers use two languages (English and Chinese in this case) to teach subject courses. It involved many aspects, such as course definition (i.e. Is it an English teaching course or a specialized course?), revision of curriculum and syllabus, textbook compiling and selection, teacher training, teaching methods and means, the designing of teaching activities, teaching assessment and so on. However, many aspects still need further study, for example, what courses should be taught bilingually? When should students take these courses? How to arrange class hour? What is the suitable proportion of English and Chinese used?Through the literature research, the author found that the study on bilingual teaching in China has mainly focused on the introduction of other countries' achievements, and the study of its theory mainly concerned bilingual teaching models practiced successfully in western countries. The author made careful and in-depth study of the related theories in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) such as Left- and Right-Brain Functioning, Transfer, Input Hypothesis, and so on, and carried out a case study of bilingual teaching in Guangxi University, from which the author was able to probe into the recent situation in bilingual teaching in colleges as well as the existing problems which await for solution. Finally, the author attempts a discussion on the prospects of bilingual teaching in Chinese universities. With the help of questionnaires, interviews and the analysis of different views of bilingual teaching from researchers and scholars, the author concludes that bilingual courses should be offered in universities, but we should seek truth from facts and make clearly understanding of the existing problems and difficulties in the process of implementation of bilingual teaching. The author believes that effective bilingual teaching can only be guaranteed by scientific attitude of the educators, good management of the institutions and appropriate teaching methods in the part of the teachers.