Research On The Cognitive Features Of College English Classroom Teaching Activity Design

Classroom activity is an essential way by which students’thinking is activated and knowledge is processed,so designing scientific classroom activity in achieving instructional objectives is necessary.With the advancement of higher education,cultivating students’thinking skills deserves greater attention.The SFLEP National Foreign Language Teaching Contest is one of the highest-level and most influential teaching contests for foreign language teachers in the foreign language education field,and the lesson designs in the teaching contest provide references for teachers to learn from their strengths and avoid the weaknesses.The investigation of this national contest helps to find out cognitive features and changes in cognition of classroom activity.This research makes a study on the 40 contestants in the 7^thand 10^thnational finals aiming at answering two questions:（1）What are the cognitive features of classroom activity design of College English teachers?（2）What are the changes in the cognitive features of classroom activity design from the 7^thto 10^thteaching contest?The author collects and classifies the 40 contestants’activities based on Bloom’s Taxonomy,then processes the data by UAM software and Excel and obtains the statistical results.Concerning the cognitive features of College English teachers’classroom activity design:among the six cognitive levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy,the activity designs rank in the descending order as understanding（34.01%）>remembering（26.11%）>creating（12.15%）>evaluating（9.92%）>applying（9.51%）>analyzing（8.3%）,indicating the College English teachers give much more devotion to lower-ordered thinking（70%）than higher-ordered thinking（30%）.Concerning the changes in the cognitive features of classroom activity design from the 7^thto 10^thteaching contest:the lower-level thinking activities（from 76%to64%）present a downward trend,on the contrary,the higher-level thinking（from 24%to 36%）activities show an upward trend,indicating the College English teachers are getting to give much more devotion to higher-ordered thinking.Finally,the author provides suggestions for College English teachers in their design of classroom activities.（1）First,teachers should design classroom activities according college students’cognitive features.Second,teachers should cut down the understanding activities and remembering activities and design more other cognitive activities properly.（2）First,teachers are expected to design activities involving each cognitive process.Second,teachers are expected to design more higher-order thinking activities so as to cultivate students’higher-order thinking skills.Then the author points out the limitations of the study and presents suggestions for further researches.