English Teaching In Changing Environment

In the boost of Chinese economy, higher vocational education in University – City College has risen to meet the demands of employment market. The traditional college education has gone more practical and skill-based. As a new trend in higher education, especially the first in Yunnan Province, City College of Kunming University of Science and Technology has created fruitful results for the past 4 years. However, with the professional education mode shading its influences on aspects of school environment in City College, ranging from exam-oriented teaching to fixed assessment system, language teachers have been brought to face new changes and challenges while their feelings and attitudes in the reform are left largely unexamined.This research is conducted to fill this gap by exploring the attitudes of the language teachers towards the changes in school, particularly exam-oriented teaching and accompanying reform in curricular, assessment and teaching material and how these attitudes form a relation with their teaching behaviors.In order to collect and compare the quantitative and qualitative data, questionnaire survey, classroom observations, and semi-structured individual interviews with English teachers were conducted to elicit(i) teachers’ attitude towards challenges,(ii) students’ perceptions of language classroom and teaching behaviors of two chosen language teachers,(iii) the relation between teacher attitude and teaching behavior,(iv) the measures to be taken to facilitate the teaching and learning in City College.The data revealed that transforming school environment affected teacher attitude in positive and negative ways. The in-depth investigation to two selected teachers proved that positive attitudes of teachers and their adaptive ability as well as professional consciousness may greatly enhance the teaching results. As for the negative influences the change brought to teachers, the study posed possible suggestions to facilitate teaching and learning in the future.