A Research On The Application Of Courseware In Reading And Writing Class Of College English Teaching

With the development of information technology, multimedia technology has beenwidely applied to College English Teaching. Since the Ministry of Educationpromulgated “College English Curriculum Requirements”, many scholars in Chinahave carried out researches on multimedia-assisted teaching from differentperspectives. Some studies introduced the theoretical basis of the multimedia-assistedforeign language teaching, some explored advantages and disadvantages ofmultimedia-assisted foreign language teaching, and others were about coursewaredesigns. Of these studies, a few suggested that courseware should not be overused inCollege English Teaching and it is supposed to be combined with the traditionalteaching methods. Nevertheless, these researches put forward only tentativesuggestions, few studies investigating the actual situation of courseware application inCollege English classroom provided further practices on how to integrate multimediacourseware in the traditional teaching.How to properly apply courseware in College English Teaching to achievesatisfying teaching results? How to combine state of art information technology andtraditional teaching methods effectively to foster students’ application competence ofEnglish language？College English teachers are faced with these teaching challenges.Aiming at solving these problems, a questionnaire is designed to make a research onthe application of courseware in reading and writing class for second year collegestudents under the guidance of constructivism. The study intends to argue the situationsof multimedia-assisted teaching and to explore an effective way to use courseware inCollege English Teaching. The questionnaire consists of two versions: one for teachersand the other for students. This author distributed the questionnaire to190undergraduates who entered Shanxi University of Finance and Economics in2012,with187valid. At the same time, this author distributed the questionnaire to48teachers in the same university, with47valid. In addition,8students and8teachers areinterviewed and recorded.The analysis of the questionnaire and records of interview presents actual situation of courseware application in College English Teaching, the problems existingin teaching, and the students needs in learning. The findings are as follows: Firstly,with images, audios and videos, courseware helps make English class richer andfresher. The current study indicates that in practical teaching, more teachers tend toemploy courseware-assisted teaching in class. Secondly, both teachers and studentsagree with each other that courseware is only a modern teaching aid, which is notsupposed to play a dominant role in College English classroom. The current studyshows that teachers now use courseware mainly based on target audience and targetteaching materials. More specifically, most teachers bring blackboard-writing and oralinterpretation back to the English classroom, which wins more points among students.Thirdly, the subjects in this study put forward the problem of what to be covered incourseware. The students expect a courseware of wide coverage. They desire moreknowledge of culture, arts, history, etc. in addition to textbook-based contents. Lastly,the current study reflects that face-to-face communication and teachers-students andstudents-students interactivities are viewed as useful and helpful in teachings, whichhelp establish classroom identity between teachers and students.Taking into account all these findings, this author invent a new teaching modebased on information technology under the guidance of constructivism. This teachingmode takes students as the center of learning and encourages them to learnindependently through cooperation.