Integration Of Traditional Approaches With Communicative Approaches In Senior High School English Class: A Survey

For a long time, English teaching in China is influenced and controlled by a teacher-centered, book-centered, grammar-translation method, audio-lingual method and an emphasis on rote learning. The result of this kind of teaching was that after many years of language learning, students could not communicate with each other in English and remain at a loss when they meet English speakers. With China's economic progress and opening to the outside world, in view of this situation, the traditional approaches, which might be out of date, can't meet the demands of the students and the economic development, so we introduced western communicative approaches to China and applied it to English teaching. However, the outcome of teaching English exclusively using the communicative approach has not provided the expected results since it was introduced into China in the 1990s. Chinese learners of English strongly resist the communicative approach. In fact resistance to the communicative approach has an explanation rooted in Chinese philosophy, culture, and basic concepts of education, for teaching is deeply rooted in the local philosophy, culture, and basic concepts of education.In an attempt to find out what are the most appropriate teaching methods for Chinese students in senior high schools, I made an investigation on the situation. English teaching and learning in three senior middle schools in FuShun; QingYuan Senior Middle School, XinBin Senior Middle School and FuShun No. 2 Senior Middle School. From the responses of 218 students and 25 teachers to the questionnaires, we can see that there are five challenges in applying communicative approaches in the Chinese educational context: non-native teachers with a lack of English proficiency; national examination; large class sizes; Chinese traditional practices; motivation. This thesis, therefore, presents that the best method is to integrate communicative approaches to the teaching of English with traditional Chinese methods. Then, it enumerates some effective measures the author has taken in EFL classrooms in FuShun No. 2 Senior Middle School, which is, using the PPP frame work; reducing the amount of teacher talk in classrooms and making the best use of pair and group work. After making an analysis of the comments of some students, it shows that the integration of communicative approaches with the traditional approaches can really help the students develop their communicative competence.