The Application Of Team Teaching In College English Education

In China, the number of English teachers and learners is extremely larger than that of other countries. English classes are most extensively offered as well (Youzhong Sun, 2011:49). Even though rich experience has been accumulated in English teaching field, it seems that there still remain problems in Chinese college English teaching due to the limitations in traditional teaching model prevailing before carrying out college English teaching reform (Limin Jin,2010:176). Excellent foreign language teaching resources are inadequate, faculty-student ratio is severely uneven and large-scale teaching model is popular in college English class. Besides, many colleges are seriously understaffed so that teachers have been bearing heavy workload for a long time (Xiaoxiang Li,2011:6).Team Teaching is a new cooperative teaching model involving two or more teachers cooperating to complete a course teaching task as a group. In Team Teaching model, teachers are expected to find that teaching pressure could be alleviated and their energies and time are saved so that teachers could utilize their expertise to a more intensive degree. As long as the teaching pressure is reduced, college teachers could be given full time to further research teaching problems, better design scientific teaching plans and continuously carry out a teaching reform, consequently, the virtuous circles in teaching would be expected (Wang Tan,2002:70).By making quantitative and qualitative researches which are designed to select teachers and students in school of foreign languages in Southeast University as research subjects, this thesis attempts to investigate some hypotheses whether Team Teaching can contribute to solving currently existing teaching problems, such as, reducing teachers’ teaching workload, taking full use of teachers’expertise, optimizing teaching resources, developing teacher professional skills and improving teaching quality.The research results showed that:1) Most of the teachers consider that the currently existing teaching model in the school of foreign language in Southeast University is a traditional one and most of them and it needs no creative changes.2) Over a half of them maintain that pressure has been reduced to some degree. Additionally, teachers are positive and confident with the beneficial sides Team Teaching model will offer in the future, that is to help reduce teaching pressure and liberate teachers with more time and energy.3) Both from teachers’and students’angles, they all get self-improvements, which indicates that teachers can strengthen their professional skills and students can enlarge their horizon in language learning.4) Teachers and students all assert that it is difficult for Team Teaching model to gain better outcomes without the supports and encouragements from school administrators.5) Teachers and students unanimously speak highly of the value in widely practicing Team Teaching model in the future.The research findings that need to be emphasized in the future are as follows:1) a customized cooperative teaching model should be created based on requirements of students’ learning, teachers’ teaching and school’s administrating.2) Teachers are expected to establish an open and active attitude to challenges brought by Team Teaching model.3) Students are expected to adjust learning strategies to the new model so that the links between teaching and learning could become immediate and efficient.4) More communications and interactions between teachers and students are wished to be conducted and a regular meeting on feedbacks is expected to be convened by teachers, because it is conducive to improving the follow-up works.5) Supports and encouragements are needed from school administration.In conclusion, Team Teaching model could be expected to realize the transformation in knowledge imparting and skill training from unilateral side to multilateral sides through mutual complementation. Teachers in any field would be given full play to pool their wisdom together in correctly understanding teaching concepts, scientifically designing teaching plans, efficiently practicing teaching activities, critically evaluating teaching results, regularly supervising teaching processes and deeply conducting teaching researches so as to enhance the teaching quality in an all-round manner (Liang Ting,2012:58).