Analysis Of The Relation Between The Language Content Of A Syllabus Under A Communicative Method And Improving Oral Abilities

As the reform policy has great influence on economy, culture, tourism and education, the beautiful natural scenery, primitive environment, rich cultural heritage and characteristic ethnic customs have made Yi areas a hot spot of tourism exploitation. Yi people are more and more eager to introduce their own traditions and cultures to the entire world. However, the lack of talents of tourism English hinders the development of local tourism. Therefore, the demand for cultivation of bilingual or multilingual talents puts on the agenda.Despite the fact that many domestic researches have been done about the education of minority nationalities, most of such researches focus on minority history, the regional economic development, group distinctions, or teaching methods. Multicultural curriculum, however, was rarely discussed from Chinese view; thus, the theories and practice on curriculum development for minority students are seldom to be found. The thesis focuses on it and aims to design a proper material involving appropriate language content which can be applied by Yi students and improve oral abilities for Yi students, with the theories of communicative approach, multicultural education, cross-cultural communication as its basis, and language content of curriculum development as its core. The author hopes that the exploration of curriculum for minority, especially the Tourism Cultural English with Yi minority characteristics, will put forward some constructive suggestions and provide a concept scheme and a practical case.In retrospect, the author reviews some relevant theories, such as communicative approach, multicultural education, cross-cultural communication and curriculum development, and then introduced the motivations, purposes and significance of the study. After that, with these theories and language content of current Tourism Cultural English, two different types of questionnaires, English background information and level, oral abilities, had been done involving 304 Yi students with different universities and majors. Based on the results of questionnaires, their English level, especially oral abilities, remained at the level of middle school in forms of vocabulary, sentence structure and language content. Major efforts of the thesis go into materials of Tourism Cultural English under the current syllabus, analyzing contents of them, the author figured out that without any integration with customs, traditions and cultures of Yi people, all these are such materials in a broad way. So they do not meet the needs of Yi students certainly. Owing to this, difficulties of improving oral abilities for Yi students are demonstrated. So, a material of Tourism Cultural English is designed already. The characteristics of language content mainly are composed of short conversations, vocabularies filled with cultures for Yi people and reading materials presenting customs of native areas.Whether it is suitable to Yi students and meets their needs, it should be put into practice. Therefore, the author took a teaching practice: 45 Yi students instructed by the author learned one unit of the material designed by the author over four periods. The author collected statistics by classroom observations, interviews and tests after classes. From all the data, the combination between simple sentences of tourism cultural English and contents of culture and history of Yi people has great influence on Yi students. The effect of teaching practice was examined in terms of three main points: knowledge-based objective, skill-based objective and quality-based objective. The language input and output of Yi students have been developed greatly. Once if the teacher paid much attention to the interaction and activities, English level and oral abilities of Yi students have been improved apparently.Based on the study of features of language content of Tourism Cultural English, the proper language content for Yi students is feasible and necessary, with a mention of the difficulties and problems existing in the study. The author expresses her wish that more researches would be done in this field, hence the English teaching quality and the economic development in Yi areas would be promoted.