An Empirical Study Of Project-based Teaching & Learning In Higher Vocational College

The higher vocational education, which has made great achievements, is supposed to train students with basic theoretical knowledge and the ability of technology application. The vocational education and other higher university education are considered as two symmetric fields in Chinese higher education. However, higher vocational English education, as an important link with the social economy, is not matching with the development rate. Most of teaching scheme is focused on the teacher-centered and book-based classroom. The teachers pay key attention to the theoretical knowledge, but not what the students need in future jobs, and ignore the students’ spoken language, cultural learning, applicative and innovative ability. English teachers know little about what the manufacture and social careers need and lack of related experience, which make the students reduce learning motivation, the teachers puzzled with their teaching,and the English class in a low status.The project-based teaching and learning in higher vocational English proposes a student-centered and teacher-guided classroom and tries to make the students use language while carrying out the job. This approach proposes to integrate English language leaning within task-designing. It requires students to gain knowledge and ability through completing the projects in teamwork. This new project teaching model is considered as a discovery of the essence of higher vocational education, which can meet the nation’s situation, and the curriculum reforming requirements, as well as embody the thinking "engineering combination". It is worth exploring, researching and popularizing.Firstly, the paper reviews the literature by introducing the definition of project-based teaching and learning and its content meanings and advantages of the approach. Secondly, the paper describes the approach’s origin, history, current situation and especially its language basis in detail. Thirdly, the paper presents its application in practice with a teaching case, including its implementing principles, teaching strategies and implementing steps. Finally, the paper proves the assumptions with the data of the questionnaires and tests to 15 teachers and 102 students before and after the one-year experiments in a Fujian vocational college.The results of pre-test questionnaire shows that 66.66% teachers always asked the students to make sentences and do the exercises in English classroom, which was too dull to arouse the students’ motivation. Only 13.33% teachers were satisfied with their students’ study status. Meanwhile, about 50% students were satisfied with the teaching status, they took part in the classroom activities occasionally, and considered the English they have learnt in such classroom was very little helpful to their jobs in the future, which meant a bad leaning motivation. And 70% students liked communication activities in class. However, the results of post-test questionnaire show that, the project-based teaching and learning can change the teachers’ and the students’ motivation and initiation. 66.67% teachers thought the students’ study interest and enthusiasm increased a lot 73.33% teachers thought the students’ language using ability promoted. 80% teachers’ teaching skills were promoted and 66.67% teachers were willing to use this approach in the future. In the experimental class, 58.82% students became more active and 84.32% could well cooperate with teammates and 82.35% students were more interested and happier in such English class, 88.24% thought the approach could help them greatly to use English, they liked the approach very much.Similarly, we got the same results from the tests before and after the experiments. After the experiments, in the experimental class, not only the average scores increased significantly, but also the gap between top and poor students decreased. However, the test results were not different apparently in the control class.Consequently, the project-based teaching and learning model is more helpful to the vocational college English teaching, and more suitable for the students’ professional training, which can stimulate students’ learning motivation and interest, and enhance the students’ English application ability, and which can also update the vocational English teachers’ teaching concepts, and is an effective way to improve their teaching quality.