Reflection And Suggestions Of Teaching With Multimedia For The English Majors

Multimedia, an advanced media which consists of sound, pictures and animation, is being applied to English teaching and learning by more and more teachers and students in colleges and universities. Teaching practice and research over the last decade have provided sufficient proof that the benefits of using multimedia in teaching and learning are self-evident. Meanwhile, it is also discovered that some problems in the use of multimedia need addressing or re-assessment. In recent years, people have begun to focus on these issues and have done a number of related studies. However, the reflective inquiries where multimedia is applied to undergraduate teaching for English majors are rare. In usual contact with teachers and students of foreign language faculty, it is found that they have some viewpoints and discussions about multimedia teaching, and in the light of these constructive viewpoints, the topic of the present thesis emerges.This research, through questionnaire survey, interview and classroom observation, investigated some randomly chosen teachers and students of English major in Guangxi Normal University, Guilin University of Electronic Science and Technology and Guilin Technology University. Through quantitative and qualitative survey and analysis, it is found that the main problems existing in multimedia teaching of English are as follows: (1) Students can not take notes effectively because of the high speed of courseware. (2) Multimedia teaching negatively reduces the opportunities of emotional exchange between teachers and students because of the change from interpersonal communication to man-machine communication in classroom. (3) Multimedia courseware often serves as a platform for gathering materials and in fact becomes an electronic version of the traditional spoon-feeding education. Thus, many students become the passive recipients of information in class. (4) Multimedia teaching is not conducive to the training of students'spoken English to a certain extent.In response to these issues, the present thesis, under the guidance of the theory of Constructivism, the Multiple Intelligence theory, Krashen's Input Hypothesis as well as the New English Language Teaching Syllabus of China, explored the methods and measures in order to deal with the existing issues and proposed the related suggestions as follows: (1) Teachers'training should further be strengthened in the use of multimedia technology; (2) The traditional teaching methods should be further changed; (3) The design quality of the multimedia courseware should be further optimized; (4) The student-centered feature should be further highlighted in the process of teaching and learning.The present thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One outlines the necessity, purpose and significance of the research, and points out the overall structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is about literature review, which reviews all stages of the development of computer-assisted language teaching and the related practice and research of multimedia teaching at home and abroad. Chapter Three describes the entire process of the survey, interview and class observation and presents the data, information and analysis of them. Chapter Four is the main part of the thesis, which mainly reveals the existing problems and explores some related countermeasures from the aspects of management, teaching and learning. Chapter Five is the conclusion.