An Experimental Study Of Application Of Flipped Classroom To ESP Teaching In Higher Vocational Colleges

In China,colleges and universities as important places where talents are cultivated,are under the influence of online technologies in all aspects.Flipped classroom has become a completely new field in which has impacted on higher education in local,national and global areas and is fast-changing now.Therefore,in order to explore the effect of it to teaching,the author applied this teaching model to ESP teaching in a higher vocational college and addressed the following two research questions:(1)To what extent can the flipped classroom teaching model promote students' language proficiency in terms of vocabulary size,reading comprehension,translating skill and listening comprehension in Q Higher Vocational College?(2)In Q Higher Vocational College,to what extent can flipped classroom teaching model stimulate students' affect in terms of WTC and confidence?The author did an experimental study from September 2017 to January 2018,which lasted for a whole semester.The subjects of the study were two parallel classes in Grade 2016 in Q Higher Vocational College in Linhai,Zhejiang Province.According to the result of the pre-test,the two classes were divided into experimental class and control class.There are respectively 39 students and 37 students in two classes.The experimental class adopted the flipped classroom teaching mode,while the control class still adopted the traditional teaching mode.This study is based on mastering learning theory,constructivist learning theory,and autonomous learning theory.During the experiment,in order to test whether the flipped classroom can promote students' language proficiency,the author took three tests in the two classes,obtained relevant data by comparing the test results,and then analyzed and discussed the results through interviews and questionnaires.Regarding the research question of to what extent the classroom can stimulate students' affect,the author mainly used questionnaires and classroom observation methods to obtain relevant data.Statistical analysis was conducted and the following results are obtained:Firstly,students' vocabulary size has been expanded in flipped classroom.Compared with the pretests of two classes,the scores of vocabulary are increased by 4 scores in posttest of experimental class,while 1.5 scores are increased in control class.Secondly,in experimental class,reading comprehension is increased by 3.32 scores in average which is higher than that in control class.However,after comparing the scores of the control class in pre-test and posttest,it is increased by 0.05 points,which is far lower than the experimental class.It proves that reading comprehension has been promoted through the implementation of flipped classroom.Finally,flipped classroom teaching mode arouses students' affect especially in terms of WTC which includes learning interest and the situation of participation in class.Through questionnaires,we know that 43% of students become interested in learning English after implementation of flipped classroom,which is thirty percentage points higher than before the experiment.On the other hand,60% of students in the experimental class took part in class activities,while only 5% of them would like to communicate with others in class before the experiment.Due to implementation of the classroom,the students' willingness to communicate(WTC)has been promoted.This experiment enriches practical research of flipped classroom,and has important theoretical and practical meaning.Through literature review,flipped classroom was more applied to science,less to arts.But the author applied flipped classroom to ESP teaching in the study and achieved good results.The experiment has proved that the flipped classroom has a positive effect on students' language proficiency and affect.In the process of implementing flipped classroom,not only the students' self-learning ability has been improved,but also the ability of searching online has been continuously developed.In addition,teachers actively adopted a variety of teaching methods,which enriched the contents of the classroom,and guided students to actively participate in classroom activities.Students played a leading role in classroom activities,which was helpful to realize prospective teaching effect.