A Study On Application Of Universal Design For Learning In College English Teaching

As a concept of teaching design, the definition of UDL was firstly designed by the Center for Applied Special Technology(CAST; 1998), stating as: one possible solution to assist special and general education teachers in developing lesson plans to use flexible instructional materials and methods that accommodate a diverse student population is called Universal Design for Learning(UDL). The research results of neuro-psychology show that learners vary significantly from learning style and cognitive style, so that teachers should hold the perspective of multiple intelligences to examine the learner's ability to learn. Domestically, what is true is that most of researches for UDL are introductions or validations for its theory structure and foreign practice, while diverse empirical researches are in short supply.This thesis attempts to investigate the application of UDL to college English teaching and finally find out suggestions to enhance the teaching effect through the researches based on relative literature, teaching experiment and questionnaire survey. This thesis contains six chapters. Starting with the introduction part, the background and significance of the thesis are provided in this part. Besides, the layout of the thesis is also mentioned. Then is the literature review of the thesis. In the first section, the definition and classification of UDL are listed out. Following two sections in this chapter gives a review of the studies on this issue both abroad and at home. With limited researches published on this topic, the author of the thesis takes similar teaching method as reference. The researches on related teaching methods also provide precious details on the follow-up study on UDL. The third chapter is the theoretical basis including Gardner's Multiple Intelligence, Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and Bloom's Taxonomy. As the theoretical basis of the following research, the rationale of the UDL are summed up in order to get the guideline for implementing UDL in the teaching experiment which are proposed in the following chapter of the paper. The forth chapter is research methodology which elaborates the research questions, research subjects, research instruments, and experimental procedures are stated in detail. It sets out to conduct a semester-long survey of 40 non-English major freshmen students in Northwest Normal University with instruments of paper tests, questionnaires and interview. The validity of the survey can be ensured with 39 subjects taking part in the pretest and posttest of integreted English competence, and 40 questionnaires were handed out in the survey and 38 valid questionnaires were taken back. Aiming at finding out and making full use of the influence of UDL to improve their language proficiency, the research questions of this thesis are listed as follows:1) What effects does the Universal Design for Learning(UDL) approach have on college non-English major learners' English learning?2)Does each group classified by perceptual learning style benefit from UDL in their specific language skill development?3) What are non-English majors' attitudes toward the UDL in college English teaching?During the process of the research, English tests, questionnaires and interview are employed as the instruments to collect data. With the help of SPSS, the data produced from this experiment is analyzed and discussed in chapter five. The results of the experiment shows that UDL is helpful to motivate students' English learning interest and initiative, better engage students participation, and improve English comprehensive competence, and thereby better achieve teaching objectives.On the basis of research findings, combining the students' attitudes with personal attempts and improvement toward UDL, this study is carried out in hope of making some contribution to implementing UDL in college English teaching and giving advices both on teachers and students. The thesis is allowed to propose the following effective suggestions for classroom implementing. Firstly, providing multiple types of alternative materials; secondly, clarifying teaching objectives constructing interactive teaching environment; thirdly, optimizing group work; fourthly, diversifying the assessment. UDL is proposed as a way to address diversity as construct of individuals and their environment in higher education classrooms.