A Study Of Group Work In The Instructional Practice Of Courses For English Majors

Nowadays Group Work as a way of organizing classroom instruction is widelypopular in the educational setting both in the world and in China. It is more so in thefield of English teaching in China. It has become the main method for Englishinstructors to create a learning environment for students to use English, for in ChinaEnglish is learned as a foreign language, which means that English is mainly learnedas a subject at school and there are rare opportunities for the learners to use it as a toolin life. Therefore, it is badly needed to create a learning environment in English classso that the students could be interested in learning English and hence become moremotivated. For English majorss they should need more opportunities to practice theirEnglish rather than just listen to the lectures about English. Goup work, to someextent, is regarded as a way that can fulfill the role and therefore, widely used inEnglish classes. In actual application, however, there are some problems of GroupWork, such as instructors adopt Group Work by their teaching experience notsystematic analysis. Moreover, there are rare studies conducted about the currentsituation and the effects of Group Work applied in courses for English majors.This study investigates the current situation of Group Work applied in coursesfor English majors in foreign language college from Shenyang Normal University byfinding out the actual application and the effects of Group Work through thequestionnaires that exam the attitudes of instructors and students towards Group Work,classroom observation and interview. And it answers these three questions: What English courses adopt the way of Group Work in the process of instruction? How isGroup Work applied in the instructional practice? And what is the effect of GroupWork in practice? By the investigation, researcher finds out that not all the Englishcourses are suitable to adopt Group Work, different instructors apply Group Work indifferent ways, and Group Work, as a way to increase the efficiency of class learningand teaching, is fond between students and instructors.