A Reflection On Language And Some Implications For English Teaching In High Schools In China

This essay expresses the author's reflection on language andlanguage Features. In the essay, the author reflects several populardefinitions and analyzes them one by one and puts forward hissupposition on the origin and evolution of language. After he reflects thedefinitions of language, he tries to give his own definition of language inplain words. "Language is primarily series of sounds arranged in differentorder and tone in human beings' minds according to the conventions ofthe speech community and then made by them through their speech organto express and communicate their feelings, opinions, ideas andinformation, etc. Then the author reflects on the design features oflanguage. He thinks the feature of arbitrariness is arguable and about thefeature of creativity, he thinks the wording is not proper, so he hassuggested using the phrase "the feature of creatability". He suggests thesocial and cultural features of language should be emphasized in collegelinguistics course books and in English teaching in high schools in China.Then the essay presents some implications of his reflection onlanguage (his reflection on the definitions of language and his reflectionon the design features of language) for English teaching in high schoolsin China. First he criticizes two myths prevailing in English teaching inChinese high schools, then he puts forward some suggestions for Englishteaching in Chinese high schools.Next the author uses his reflection on language and his own teachingexperience and his suggestions to analyze a successful teaching method, Zhang Sizhong Method of FLT. He believes that the success of ZhangSizhong Method of FLT mainly lies in these respects:(1) Zhang Sizhong has seen clearly the nature of language and hasgrasped the design features of language so that he can treats languagefaithfully in his teaching.(2) Thus he can deal with several relationships properly in histeaching. He has struck a balance between spoken English and writtenEnglish; a balance between teacher's instruction and students' experienceof real English; a balance between teaching grammar rules and teachingthe rules of customs and culture and a balance between listening,speaking, reading, writing and translating.Finally the thesis goes on to introduce briefly the author's successfulteaching experiment with his reflection on Language and someimplications for English teaching in high schools in China, including hisbeliefs about language and language teaching which guide him in hisexperiment, the main procedures of his experiment and the result of hisexperiment. This experiment not only proves that the author's method ofFLT works very well, but also proves that his his reflection on Languageis right and very helpful to his teaching work.The author is confident that this thesis is of some value in guiding theteaching of English in Chinese high schools.