The Interactive Model In The Flipped Classroom

Since the flipped classroom teaching approach was introduced into China, it has attracted great attention of many scholars, teachers and educators. A variety of studies have been made to examine whether this new model is applicable and efficient. Up to now, most studies have been conducted from macro perspectives, such as the applicability of the flipped classroom, comparison between the flipped classroom and the traditional classroom and so on. Fewer studies have been conducted to investigate the flipped classroom model from micro perspectives, like the interactive model.The College English Reading Course is regarded as one of the key courses in the whole college English curriculum and draws great attention of teachers and students. As for students, the improvement of reading skills can not only help them to get higher marks in English tests but also facilitate the training of other English learning skills. While as for teachers, training and improving students’ reading ability is one of their most important teaching objectives. Despite its significance, the current situation of college English reading course is far from satisfactory. As a special group, students from police colleges have their own characteristics. On the one hand, they are more self-disciplined, time-conscious and full of team spirit than the students from ordinary colleges and universities. On the other hand, they are also faced with more problems, like fewer English courses, lower English reading ability, fewer English reading motivations and so on.In order to explore appropriate teaching methods to increase students’ English reading interest and improve the effect and efficiency of college English reading class in Zhejiang Police College (ZJPC), a new model which is named the Interactive Model in the Flipped Classroom (MFC) is designed. According to this new model, students acquire new knowledge and develop their language proficiency by fulfilling corresponding pre-, in- and after-class tasks through student-student interaction (SSI) and teacher-student interaction (TSI).In this study, ninety-five students of anti-terrorism major in ZJPC were selected as the subjects. Among these ninety-five students, fifty-five formed the experimental group (EG) while the other forty were selected to set up the control group (CG). Questionnaires and interviews were designed and conducted to the subjects both before and after the experiment. The results have indicated that the application of the IMFC can significantly improve students’ English reading ability by motivating students to participate in classroom interaction, increasing their learning interest, training their autonomous learning abilities and guiding them to deeper understanding of the knowledge they have learned. Furthermore, two reading tests extracted from the College English Test Band 4 (CET-4) in December,2013 (Test Paper A and B)1 were adopted respectively to measure students’ English reading proficiency before and after the experiment. The result further proved that the application of the IMFC can significantly improve students’ English reading proficiency.However, during the period of applying the IMFC, some limitations of this study should also be pointed out, like the relatively small sample size, immature feedback system or progress tracing system and so on. Therefore, the future orientations should be focused on testing this model on a more diversified sample to examine whether it can be applied in a wider range and establishing a more efficient feedback system.