A Linguistic Ecology Study On College Students' English Learning In The Context Of Informatization

The present era is an informatization era.In 2007,the Education Ministry of our country put forward to develop a computer-aided and classroom-based college English teaching model.In 2010,speeding up the process of educational informatization is listed as one of the development strategies in the National Mediumand Long-Term Plan for Education Reform and Development.As a result,non-English majors' English learning in our country,as a main activity in language education,is deeply influenced by informatization,for example,the students' English learning resource,methods,attitude and so on.So,it is necessary and inevitable to research the situation of college students' English learning in the informatization context.In recent years,most studies have focused on the reform of English teaching with informatization.The research on college students' English learning from the angle of students is in a small number,especially the research on students' English learning after class using both quantitative and qualitative methods.Moreover,the research from the perspective of the new inter-discipline linguistic ecology is less.The research field of linguistic ecology is quite extensive,the nuclear research question of which is the interaction or interrelation between language and the environment.Undergraduates' English learning has the feature of an ecosystem,and informatization is its ecological environment.So,this paper does a research on undergraduates' English learning in the context of informatization based on linguistic ecology,aiming to investigate the relation between the two factors and at the same time to enlighten the ecological development of college English learning.Taking the 150 freshmen from a university in northeast China as the research subjects,this research adopted a questionnaire designed by the author to investigate the undergraduates' computer utilization,English learning motivation and interest,attitudes towards network-assisted English learning,self-learning situation,learning objectives,action,self-evaluation,information accomplishment as well as opinions on the role of English teachers,themselves and the school in informatization context.Atthe same time,the following questions are tried to be solved:(1)Nowadays,what is the situation of undergraduates' English learning in class and after class in the informatization context?(2)According to the theory of linguistic ecology,what are the possible reasons for them if there are unbalanced phenomena between undergraduates' English learning and informatization context?The results show that in the informatization context,undergraduates' English learning interest is relatively low;the students are lack of appropriate learning methods,strategies and technical capacity;their frequency of using technical channels to learn English is low;they have no clear learning objectives or strong perseverance to finish their study plans;and their role in English class is passive.There are three aspects of ecological unbalance between undergraduates' English learning and the informatization context: in structure,there is unbalance between the universal spreading of informatization and undergraduates' lack of intrinsic interest motivation,low utilization of technical channels and the passive role in English learning;in function,there is unbalance between the students' lack of learning methods,learning strategies as well as information accomplishment of the students and the colorful resource and learning channels provided by informatization.Besides,there is unbalance between the multi-function of informatization and undergraduates' narrow objective in English learning with internet;in the input-and output-energy,the energy that students input in English learning in the context of informatization is still higher than the English knowledge and skills they gain.There are mainly three sources of the reasons for the ecological unbalance: From the students' perspective,they are lack of interest motivation,poor planning capacity and perseverance;they seldom communicate with others on English learning,and they may have unhealthy competition with their classmates;they may not have been adaptive to the new English learning models in university and they may have become more relaxed and eased after entering university life.From English teachers' perspective,they need to continue improving their information accomplishment;and they have not made the students as the center in class.From the perspective of the school,the technical support is still not enough and the online English learning center set up by the schoolis still imperfect.Through investigating the current situation of undergraduates' English learning in the informatization context and analyze the unbalance between them,it is helpful for the students to reflect their own learning;at the same time,it is helpful for the English teachers to know more about the students' learning so as to carry out targeted teaching activity.According to the possible reasons for the ecological unbalance,students,English teachers and the school can find their deficiency respectively to improve,the same aim of which is to help undergraduates learn English more ecologically.