| In order to keep up with the new developments of higher education in China and meet the requirements for qualified personnel in the new era,College English Curriculum Requirements provide colleges and universities with the guidelines for English instruction to non-English major students.The College English curriculum requirements points out that the objective of college English teaching is to develop students' ability to use English in an all-round way, especially in listening and speaking,so that in their future and social interactions they will be able to exchange information effectively through both spoken and written channels.Therefore, improving non-English majors' oral ability should be an important issue in foreign language teaching practice.America TV series,which is viewed as a kind of authentic video,provide abundant sources of classroom activity,real communicative situation and content-rich samples of the target language.Teaching spoken English through America TV series could offer a wide,active and vivid vision situation,and enables students to be personally on the screen with the aid of multimedia technology.This teaching method can motivate students and enlarge teachers' teaching space simultaneously.Then,the study focused on the effectiveness of the use of America TV series on the improvement of non-English majors' oral ability.This experiment lasted for eight weeks,covering a total of sixteen teaching periods.The subjects for this study were 30 sophomore physical department students from Qufu normal university.The teaching materials were selected from four America TV series,including Comedy Chuck Season01Episode01-Pilot,Fantasy Moonlight Season01Episode01-No Such Thing as Vampires,Action Prison Break Season01Episode01-Pilot and Reality show the moment of truth Season01Episode01.Through 8 week's teaching practice,the study was expected to testify:1) whether students' English speaking ability can be improved;2) whether students have a positive attitude towards this oral English teaching approach;3) whether this teaching mode can influence students' oral learning process in terms of their learning initiative and confidence of communicating in English.The data were collected through a pretest and posttest of oral English,questionnaires,interview and observation.Both qualitative method and quantitative method were used for data analysis.The results of data analysis showed that America TV series-based oral instruction can improve students' oral ability in terms of language use,pronunciation and intonation.Also,it was helpful for cultivating students' initiative in oral English learning and establishing students' confidence in communicating in English.Most of the students in the study were active in reviewing America TV series scripts and language points-related handouts,practicing their oral pronunciation and intonation,increasing the chance of communicating with classmates in English,watching and learning other America TV series,and making use of web resources to get access to America TV series-related useful information.Besides,most of the students showed a positive attitude towards this teaching mode.They claimed that this kind of teaching could not only provide a good platform for them to practice spoken English but also make oral English easily understood and memorized.This study tentatively indicates that it is effective and feasible to use America TV series in non-English majors' oral instruction.These results also provided the theoretical and practical foundations for college English teachers to use the teaching mode.However,the study also revealed that America TV series-based oral instruction still had some deficiencies,such as the design of instructional activities and the summarization of language points need much time and energy.Also,it should be pointed out that the study itself has its limitations.For example,the number of subjects and the period of experiment were limited.Therefore,more studies should be done in the future to further prove its effectiveness.
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