| In China, the education industry has been booming against the background of economic prosperity and political stability. In this context, the Chinese communicate with the international community more and more frequently. English, as an international language, has shown its dominating position in the international cooperation. As a result, lots of adults begin to learn English to adapt themselves to the rapidly changing society, especially oral English.Traditional oral class pays much attention to reading and translation but neglects speaking and listening, which goes against practical communication. Meanwhile the author consults previous monographs and theses about English teaching for adults, and the results show that educationists mainly focus on the examination-oriented education for middle school students and college students but neglect English teaching for adults. However, adults also couldn’t hide their eagerness to learn English, especially oral English.In the 20 th century, the Experiential Teaching method was put forward by J. Dewey, an American educationist. J. Dewey points out that it is experience that makes education meaningful. The Experiential Teaching method lays special stress on constructing real language environment and encourages students to gain new knowledge by experiencing and reconstructing, so as to arouse students’ learning interest and improve their oral English.Based on previous studies at home and abroad, the author intends to analyze the influence of the Experiential Teaching method on oral teaching for adults and aims to find out an effective way to improve their oral English. In this thesis, the author proposes 3 hypotheses: 1) The Experiential Teaching method plays a positive role in adults’ English learning interest; 2) The Experiential Teaching method plays a positive role in adults’ oral proficiency; 3) The Experiential Teaching method makes a difference between the elite students and the underachieving students.In order to verify these 3 hypotheses, a practical research was implemented at one English training institution from April to December in 2014. The research subjects are students from two classes in this English training institution and the author divides them into the control class and the experimental class randomly. The control class adopts the traditional English teaching method, while the experimental class applies the Experiential Teaching method. The pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire and the pre-test and post-test are used as research instruments to investigate the learning interest and learning effect of students both in EC and CC before and after the experiment.This thesis contains six chapters. In the first part, the author makes a basic illustration, including research background, research significance, research questions, research methods and structure of the thesis. The second part covers the development of the Experiential Teaching method and the author summarizes the previous studies of the Experiential Teaching method at home and abroad. Its theoretical background—the constructivist theory--- is listed afterward in chapter three. In chapter four, the author presents the research hypotheses, research subjects, research instruments and research procedures in detail. The fifth chapter is the analysis and discussion of the Experiential Teaching method in oral teaching for adults. In the concluding chapter, major findings and pedagogical implications are listed. Meanwhile, limitations and suggestions for further study are listed afterward.By analyzing and discussing the experimental data collected from the two questionnaires and two tests, the author confirms the feasibility of the Experimental English Teaching method in oral English teaching for adults. The results show that the Experiential Teaching Method can be useful for arousing adults’ learning interest and improving their oral English. Meanwhile, it makes a difference between the underachieving students and the elite students. Furthermore, it is a breakthrough in oral English teaching for adults and it is also a useful means and a developing trend in oral teaching. While this research is limited in time and research samples, more scholars are expected to study this research topic to push the oral English teaching for adults to a higher level!... |
