The Application Of Interactive Approach In Oral English Class For Second-Year College Non-English Majors

In fact, there is no denying that the old way of teaching has made learning much waste of time and energy with low efficiency, and resulted in the so-called" deaf and mute English"(Hu Zhuanglin,2002) especially for first year and second year Non-English majors. Comparatively speaking, they are poor in English and often worried about their oral English even give up study. Therefore, along with economic development, social progress and more frequent interactions between countries, students are required to improve their oral English to a higher level. Under such circumstances, the traditional teacher-centered teaching patterns is more and more disadvantages. So, on the basis of Interactive Language Teaching (ILT), the author proposes Interactive Oral English Teaching (IOET) model in the thesis and aims to investigate the effect of this model on students’ communicative ability.The experiment had been conducted from January,2012to January,2013in Yangtze University (YU), lasting for about two semesters. The subjects were selected from second year classes which were non-English majors. They were divided into the experimental group (Group A) and the control one (Group B). Group A employed IOET model and in the Group B Traditional Teaching patterns were carried out. Group A make an emphasis on the development of the students’ communicative competence (CC). While, in group B, much emphasis is placed on the transmission of linguistic knowledge.Throughout the whole experimentation, quantitative and qualitative research instruments were employed for data collection and analysis. The results of the experiment are that:Firstly, with respect to the learner’s oral production ability, complexity level, accuracy level, the scores by the experimental group were distinctively higher than those by the control group. Secondly, the students taught by the IOET model can speak more fluently than the students who are taught in the traditional way. Lastly, respecting the ability of dealing with different subjects and topic, Group A is apparently better than Group B.The findings of this experiment provide enough evidence that the IOET model can improve the learners’ oral English more efficaciously than the Traditional Method. According to the results, this thesis integrate the relevant concepts, theoretical bases and the current state of students’low communicative competence (CC) to obtain four feasible and effective patterns of interactive oral English teaching: teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, teacher-teacher interaction and student-computer interaction. In teacher-student interaction, teacher’s questioning is the most common pattern used in classroom, which offer students the opportunity to practice English directly; In student-student interaction group work is popular with students, which can create equal and free atmosphere; The interaction between teachers is achieved by the way of attending a lecture and discussion. In student-computer interaction Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) is a new platform which can provide vivid image to promote interaction in classroom and a great number of learning resources outside the classroom.Specifically speaking, the thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One introduces the background, purpose and significance, and the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two reviews related studies of ILT at home and abroad and relevant definitions and the theoretical basis of ILT:Interactive, ILT, communicative competence (CC), the input theory and the output theory. On the basis of the theoretical foundation of ILT, the author proposes the IOET model in the third chapter. Chapter Four, the main part of the thesis describes experimental researches which including the experimental design, experimental process and the experimental results. Chapter Five is concerned with the pedagogical implications from the following perspectives:balancing language input and communicative output; creating democratic and harmonious atmosphere; re-orientating the roles of the teacher and the learner and giving special attention to classroom interaction. Chapter Six makes a conclusion of the whole thesis, which points out the major findings and the limitations of the study. Suggestions for further studies are also made.