On The Relationship Between College English Teachers' Information Literacy And Teaching Effectiveness In The Information Age

With the development of information and communication technology,digitalized education has now become a prevalent trend in higher education.Since computer has been used for language teaching in the 1960s,the integration of technology into language teaching has shown its dominant depth and width comparing with that in other disciplines(Zhou Xiaoyong,2010).But according to the status quo of CALL in China,college English teachers tend to be underuse,overuse,or even abuse technologies in their teaching practices(Wang Linhai,Zhang Qing,&Ma Lan 2014:48-49).Teachers' information literacy is playing an increasingly important role in the promotion and realization of digitalized foreign language education in China.Foreign language teachers' information literacy is thought to be the key factor that may determine the effectiveness of technology integration into teaching practices,and can help enrich teaching contents,and enhance students' learning efficiency and autonomous learning abilities.But most former researches in this field simply took a positive attitude towards the effectiveness of CALL,but lacked investigation on the relationship of technology,teacher,student,and teaching effectiveness between each other(Ren Yang&He Gaoda,2014:50-51),and most empirical studies evaluated teaching effectiveness mainly through students' examination scores,but neglected to assess students' language learning process and learning strategies.Based on the former researches,this study aims to address the following three questions through an empirical study in China:1.What are the factors that may have influences on college English teachers' information literacy in the information age?2.Does college English teachers' information literacy have any impacts on their teaching effectiveness?3.How can college English teachers' information literacy and teaching effectiveness be improved?to conclude the relationship between teachers' information literacy and teaching effectiveness,and provide some suggestions for the development of college English teaching and teachers' professional development in the information age.This study has employed a mixed method design combined with questionnaire,classroom observations and interviews through three research phases during an academic year in 2016.In the first phase,questionnaire survey was conducted on college English teachers to acquire a general information about their present information literacy and teaching situation.In the second phase,classroom observations and interviews were conducted on six teachers with representative information literacy values from D University1 to get more information of teachers'information literacy and its relationship with their CALL teaching performance,and then questionnaires on non-English major students with medium level English proficiency were used to analyze the relationship between teachers' information literacy and students' learning outcomes.Two distinguished professors of foreign language education have also been consulted in this phase about their opinions on the relationship between teachers' information literacy and their teaching effectiveness.In the third phase,a longitudinal study was conducted in two teachers'classes in D University through ten weeks' classroom observations,a pre and a post-questionnaire survey on their students with advanced English proficiency,and interviews with six students from each of the two classes to compare the impacts exerted by different teaching modes on students' language learning outcomes.Findings discovered in the research are as follows:1.College English teachers' information literacy was examined to reside in the medium level of the questionnaire scale which remains to be improved,and particular attention should be paid to the development of teachers' information competence and information integration competence.The factors that had influences on teachers'information literacy came from both internal factors including such as age,gender and professional title,and external factors including whether higher education institutions'provided microteaching-labs and whether they posed clear requirements on teachers'digitalized teaching competence.2.The influences that teachers' information literacy may have on teaching effectiveness were discussed from two perspectives:teachers' CALL teaching performance and students' learning outcomes.In terms of teachers' teaching performance,teachers with higher information literacy were observed to have more competence in adopting digitalized teaching modes,selecting multimodal teaching contents and instruments,and designing rich teaching phases to enhance students'engagement and particularly cultivating their pragmatic language knowledge in class.But the effects of teachers' information literacy on students' learning outcomes differentiated in regard to their language proficiency.For the students with medium proficiency,teachers' information literacy may have more positive influences on students' strategy use and explicit language knowledge acquisition;for the students with advanced proficiency,teachers' information literacy seemed to have offered more help in stimulating students' learning interests and motivation toward the target language and its culture.3.The development of teachers' information literacy is considered as a solvable challenge not only in the field of foreign language education but also across other disciplines and subjects inside higher education.To improve information literacy,college English teachers firstly need to raise their relearning awareness and take actions to improve their knowledge base,for the information environment has fostered the process of academic reengineering with the advent of new knowledge and skills.Secondly,higher educational institutions should provide more training programs to enhance teachers' technological pedagogical competence and their abilities of conducting teaching research,advance the level of digitalized teaching support services,and include teachers' technological pedagogical competence as an essential indicator in the evaluation system to help popularize digitalized teaching in foreign language education in the future.Last but not the least,official educational department needs to issue evaluation standards of English teachers' information literacy and develop related incentive and restriction mechanism to offer institutional and policy support for the development of teachers' information literacy.