The Application Of CBI Theme-based Model To Oral English Teaching In Higher Vocational Colleges

The Basic Requirements for English Teaching in Higher Vocational Colleges issued bythe National Ministry of Education emphasize that we should cultivate students’ actualcommunicative abilities as well as their English language knowledge and basic skills.Obviously, English communication competence is one of the essential communicativelanguage competences for the students in higher vocational colleges. But the oral Englishlevel of higher vocational students is far from satisfactory.“Dumb English” phenomenon isprominent among vocational college students; they lack interest and confidence in speakingEnglish. In order to enhance the students’ interest in learning English, improve students’ oralEnglish competence and make them better adapt to the society and meet the marketrequirements, we must change the traditional teaching model and adopt effective teachingmethods.Content-based Instruction (hereinafter referred to as CBI), a second language andforeign language teaching approach which integrates language and content provides a newperspective for optimizing second language teaching and foreign language learning, sprang upin1980s. The biggest difference between CBI and traditional teaching model lies in that CBIadvocates learning through themes rather than simply learning language to acquire languageskills. At present in China, the majority of CBI research is focusing on the application of CBIin elementary, middle schools and universities, but rarely in higher vocational colleges. Andmany scholars and teachers have conducted a series of researches on effectiveness andfeasibility of theme-based CBI in English reading teaching. Studies on oral English teaching,especially in higher vocational colleges have been insufficiently conducted.Based on constructivism and task-based approach, the present study adopts theme-basedCBI in the oral English teaching in Higher Vocational Colleges in the aim of exploringstrategies and concrete effective methods. The subjects of this study are freshmen of twoLevel A classes in the chemistry major in Hunan Chemical Industry Vocational TechnologyInstitute: Class12A1as the experimental class and Class12A2as control class. In the experimental class, we choose the teaching materials according to professional trainingobjectives, students’ language needs and cognition needs as well as personal interest. And wealso simulate role-play on topics such as job interview, meeting people in the office, diningout for business, describing products, negotiating price, handling the complaint as the mainline to carry out the practice of oral English teaching. In the control class we adopt traditionalteaching model PPP (Presentation-Practice-Production). The research is conducted in thewinter semester of2013. The tools of the survey include questionnaire, oral pre-test and oralpost-test and interview. The data of the experiment is processed by Excel2003and SPSS16.0software. The data analysis indicates that the theme-based CBI is helpful in improvingstudents’ oral proficiency and enhancing the students’ learning interest and motivation, andthe theme-based CBI is superior to traditional teaching model. And the conclusions of theresearch are summarized as follows:1）The theme-based CBI model designed occupation–oriented can stimulate students’ impetus in English learning and enhance their interest andmotivation toward oral English learning;2）The theme-based CBI has shifted oral Englishteaching from single language vocabulary teaching to language contextual use, greatlyenhancing the fluency of student’s oral English;3）The theme-based CBI is of great help inimproving students’ English communicative competence, thus making students better meetthe requirement of the society.There inevitably exist some shortcomings and deficiencies due to short research time andinsufficient experimental subjects, which in a sense affect the accuracy of the data analysis.Yet the pedagogical implications based on the experiment, such as the choice of topics,teachers’ role’s alteration, the application of modern equipment, the evaluation methods，canprovide valuable references for the application of CBI in the oral English teaching in HigherVocational Colleges.