A Research On The Application Of Anchored Instruction To Higher Vocational College Oralenglish Teaching

In recent years,with the rapid development of higher vocational colleges in our country,more and more qualified students with both professional knowledge and good English abilities are needed.Oral English,as an important productive skill,receives much attention in higher vocational English teaching.Actually,there are many majors in higher vocational colleges which require a relatively high level of oral English,such as English education,business English,air service,hotel management,tourism,etc.Oral English has a great influence on these students‘ career development in the future.Nevertheless,oral English teaching in higher vocational colleges faces greater challenges than that in normal universities and colleges.Students‘ English foundation is generally weak,especially their oral English competence.And their English learning enthusiasm is not high.Therefore,it is high time that we English teachers should find out effective ways of teaching oral English and improve students‘ oral English abilities.Based on constructivism,the teaching experiment was conducted among 60 students majoring in English education in Hohhot Vocational College,lasting one semester.The author selected two research questions:(1)Does anchored instruction contribute to improving students‘ oral English achievements?(2)What are students‘ attitudes towards anchored instruction? The experimental instruments include oral tests,questionnaires,and interviews.The concrete experimental procedures are introduced in the following part.Before the teaching experiment,an oral pre-test was carried out among all the students from both the experimental class and the comparative class and their oral achievements‘ analysis was conducted through independent sample T test,aiming to make sure the experimental objects have no significant differences in oral achievements.At the very beginning of the experiment,questionnaire one was handed out to the 60 students so as to learn about their current oral English learning situations.And all the 60 questionnaires were collected later.At the end of the experiment,questionnaire two was given out only to the experimental class and 30 questionnaires were all collected.At the same time,three interviews were conducted among 9 students with different oral English levels in order to find out students‘ real attitudes towards anchored instruction.After the experiment,a post-test was conducted among the 60 students.And the data of students‘ final achievements in both the pre-test and the post-test was analyzed through software SPSS V19.0.Only independent T-test had been conducted instead of paired samples T test in order to find out accurate experimental results.As for the questionnaires,the author made descriptive analysis of questionnaire one and conducted comparative analysis of the two questionnaires through software SPSS aiming to get some valuable research findings.Besides,the content of the interviews was recorded,transcribed and analyzed in order to learn about students‘ real attitudes towards anchored instruction.Two conclusions are drawn finally.One is that anchored instruction plays a positive role in improving students‘ oral English scores.However,no remarkable and significant differences have been found in experimental objects‘ oral achievements in a short time period.The second conclusion is that oral English class based on anchored instruction is welcome among higher vocational college students.Students‘ attitudes towards this new oral teaching model are positive.Specifically speaking,attitude includes three important factors: cognitive factor,affective factor and behavior factor.From a cognitive perspective,the author finds that the majority of the students believe current oral English class can meet their requirement for oral English class.In terms of affective factor,students‘ attitudes towards anchored instruction are acceptance and fondness.In the aspect of behavior factor,we can learn from the questionnaires and interviews that more students have begun to make appropriate oral training plans,make full preparations before class,and participate in class activities and college oral activities actively.Furthermore,based on the main findings and limitations of the research,some suggestions for further research were put forward by the author.