An Empirical Study Of "Empathy" In College English-Viewing, Listening & Speaking

〝Empathy〞means〝feeling into〞. It comes from the German word〝Einfühlung〞,which originally refers to permeating emotion into aesthetic objects in aesthetics. Later,〝empathy〞is widely used in psychology, inter-cultural communication, linguistics, rhetoric, language teaching and other fields.The research brought〝empathy〞into the teaching of College English-Viewing, Listening and Speaking ( CEVLS for short ) . It aims to explore how college English teachers can improve their teaching effect by applying〝empathy〞to class content, class organization and the teacher's role. It also aims to explore how teachers can improve students'empathic competence, including both intralingual and interlingual empathic competence. The empirical research is based on the actual teaching experience in East China University of Political Science and Law. The examinees are 195 freshmen from different backgrounds. Two questionnaires were administered separately at the beginning and the end of the term. They were intended to know about the students'level of English listening and speaking, their needs and psychology as well as to test their empathic competence. In-class observations and after-class reflections were made for better application of〝empathy〞in coming lectures.After a term of experiment, the application proved fruitful. Most of the students became more proficient in listening and speaking and less afraid of speaking out. They became more interested in English. The questionnaire results also confirmed students'improvement in empathic competence. With empathic competence improved, the pragmatic communication competence and inter-cultural communication competence are lifted accordingly.Listening and speaking are crucial in the whole language learning but are rarely explored from the angle of empathy. So we're confident that these preliminary explorations will be beneficial to the teaching of College English-Viewing, Listening and Speaking. What's more, the research is from the first-hand experience of a beginner in teaching. So it'll probably offer some unique enlightenment for new comers in the teaching career.