A Study Of The Positive Attitude Of Freshmen With English Major Towards Communicative Language Teaching In Oral English Classes

With the rapid development of the world, English learning has become essentialfor a lot of Chinese people. English teaching approaches have been renovating fordecades from the traditional grammar approach, audio-lingual approach to the latestcommunicative language teaching and task-based learning approach (郭晓静,2007).Traditional grammar approach dominated in the20thcentury and its failure indeveloping the communicative competence of the learners led to the introduction ofcommunicative language teaching approach in1980s.Meanwhile, In order to change the unbalanced development of English learningin speaking, a lot of foreign teachers are introduced to teach oral English to Chinesestudents. Most of them are trying to apply the communicative language teachingapproach to teach their students (刘俊&钟坚,2005). In communicative languageteaching classes, students are required to express their ideas about a certain topiceither individually or in groups. According to Hu (2002a), this approach made effectsin certain ways by helping a lot of Chinese English learners get out of the deadlock ofno speaking. Meanwhile, this approach was criticized by is ineffectiveness out of thereticence of the students in the classroom. It seems that a lot of students hold anegative attitude towards the communicative language teaching. Many researchers(e.g., Zhou,2014, Lee,1996;刘俊&钟坚,2005,方芳,2007) put their eyes on thosestudents who hold negative attitude and feel reluctant to communicate in the classesand tried to explore the reasons by attributing it to traditional Chinese classroomculture, students’ language ability and so on. But researchers seldom paid theirattention to the students who hold positive attitude to CLT. This study is undertaken toexplore the factors that contribute to the students’ positive attitudes towards CLT inoral English classes. In this study, two research questions are proposed.1. Whatfactors contribute to students’positive attitude towards CLT in oral English classes?2.How do these factors contribute to students’ positive attitude towards CLT in oralEnglish classes?In order to guarantee the validity of the study,26freshmen with English major from300students were chosen as the subjects of the study after a two-month classobservation. Afterwards, These26students were interviewed individually byanswering the relevant questions of the study in front of an electronic recordingdevice. Through the transcription and analysis of the recordings, two researchquestions were figured out in certain degree. Accordingly, an emergent theory wasemerged with the factors of enjoying western culture, appreciating English itself,previous learning experiences, developing speaking skills. All these factors lead to aperson’s positive attitude towards CLT in oral English classes. Meanwhile, factorssuch as personalities, career plans, western culture exposure, English proficiency andeducational background also have great influence on a student’s attitude towards CLTin oral English classes. Based on the data analysis, a person’s personality could haveimpact on his or her language behavior in certain ways since22out of26studentsclearly stated that they were outgoing and talkative in daily life and they benefited alot in oral English classes from these personalities. Thus, it’s reasonable to say that aperson with outgoing and open-minded personalities would be more likely to engagein class activities. Career plan is also an important motivator for holding positiveattitude towards CLT. In the study, most of the subjects (22) stated that they plannedto take up jobs that are related to English after graduation.5of them even claimed itwas unacceptable to do the work unrelated to English. The exposure to westerncultures either western pop culture or western general culture is another element thatcontributes to the positive attitude of the subjects. On the basis of the study, a person’sEnglish proficiency is not that important as imagined. It is better to claim thatself-confidence is critical to motivate students to communicate with others. Inaddition, with the similar educational background in English learning, mostparticipants seldom had the chance to get exposure to oral English classes beforecollege, which is the least likely factor contributing to their attitude towards CLT.This study is meaningful to improve the efficiency of the English learners. Itcould also enlighten English teachers both from China and foreign countries and helpthem employ more efficient ways to motivate their students to participate in theclasses by creating a comfortable learning environment, helping students become more confident through encouragement, presenting more attractive western culturelanguage materials or by arming themselves with good traits of a popular teacher andso on.