探究交际语言教学法在英语阅读课中的优势及其运用

论文总字数：32004字

摘 要

交际教学法（CLT）让学习者通过真实的交流来提高交际能力。如果教师提供最能满足学习者要求的机会，那么，学习者们就能够更好的参与到其中并更有效的学习。随着交际教学法在英语阅读课中被大力推崇，设置相关的活动并执行仍然是一个挑战。

本文将探究交际教学法（CLT），首先分析了传统教学法会引起的问题，然后着重介绍了交际教学法在英语阅读课中的运用。此外，本文还探究了交际教学法的优点以及存在的一些争议。

关键词：交际教学法;英语阅读课;传统英语教学法

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review………………………………………………………1

3. Problems Caused by Traditional Teaching Methods…………………2

3.1 Fossilization of teaching concepts……………………………………3

3.2 Standardization of the evaluation system………………………….3

3.3 Loss of the subjective consciousness of students……………………3

4. Communicative Language Teaching …………………………...4

4.1 Definition of CLT…………………………………………………4

4.2 Origin of CLT……………………………………………………...5

4.3 Features and basic principles of applying CLT……………….5

5. Contrast between Traditional Teaching Methods and CLT….…....7

5.1 Contrast in terms of objectives…………………………………………..7

5.2 Contrast in terms of roles of teacher and students………………………7

5.3 Contrast in terms of techniques………………………………………….8

1. Application of CLT in the Teaching of English Reading……………..8

6.1 Pre-reading……………………………………………………………….9

6.2 Wile-reading…………………………………………………………….10

6.3 Post-reading……………………………………………………………12

7. Advantages of Communicative Language Teaching………………12

8. Controversies and Debates about Communicative Language Teaching…………………………………………………………………...13

9. Conclusion………………………………………………………………14

Works Cited………………………………………………………….15

1. Introduction

English, a global language, is used in about 100 countries all around the world. According to a relevant research, an approximate 400 million people use English as their mother tongue, and a similar number of people use it as their second language. As we all know, English has occupied a very important place in international academic and business communication. So the teaching of it has become a hot issue worldwide. Therefore, there is a great demand for an appropriate teaching method. English teachers have employed various methods, such as Grammar-Translation Method (GTM), Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), Direct Method, and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Traditionally, English reading class is always boring for being teacher-centered. Teachers merely concentrate on explaining words and grammar rules. As a result, students have few chances to develop their competence in language use. So, it is urgent and imperative to find an efficient teaching method, which provides the opportunity for the creation of Communicative Language Teaching. The most important function of CLT is to enable students to use English in class just as they use it in real life. Now CLT is a dominant approach in English Language Teaching (ELT) in China.

This thesis consists of eight parts: Part One is literature review which focuses on some essential theories about CLT. The second part is concerned with some problems caused by traditional teaching methods. Part Three gives a brief introduction of CLT, including its definition, origin and basic applying principles. The fourth part makes a comparison between CLT and traditional teaching method from three aspects. Part Five is the specific application of CLT in reading class. Part Six highlights the advantages of CLT. The following part explores the controversies about CLT. Part Eight is the conclusion of the study.

2. Literature Review

Communicative Competence, the term created by Hyme, and functional linguistics invented by Halliday have made great contribution to the birth of CLT. They held the view that it was considerably necessary for learners to focus on communicative proficiency rather on mere mastery of grammar rules and vocabulary. In the following years, Tollefson, Savigonon and Mckay did a lot of research to work out a perfect communicative approach.

Galloway argues that CLT could be said to be the product of educators and linguists who were dissatisfied with Audio-Lingual Method (ALM) and Grammar Translation Method (GTM) in English teaching. In other words, the creation of CLT was a response to ALM and GTM. The final goal of it is to improve previous language teaching methods and search for more efficient language teaching methods for language teachers and students.

Anderson reckons that if the teacher could have an insight into students’ needs and learning habits, he should select the exact key to his passionate reading teaching. Undoubtedly, this key is CLT for it would be the most efficient teaching method. Not only Anderson but also Richards and Rodgers admitted that, by using CLT method to teaching English reading, teachers could cultivate students" reading skills.

CLT was brought to China in the late 1970s by international ELT specialists working in some Chinese universities, which Chinese teachers strongly resisted at the beginning. Later on, Chinese experts had a heated debate on the necessity, appropriateness, and effectiveness of adopting CLT in China. Then the Ministry of Education was convinced that it would provide the best solution to the national wide problem: students’ poor communicative competence in English. As a result, CLT was promoted intensively in English teaching. Although CLT has been carried out for many years in China, teachers are still analyzing the text word by word and sentence by sentence, especially in English reading class. This situation entails immediate change. It is high time for us to raise teachers’ awareness of applying CLT in class. However, it is found that some previous scholars just made a general study of the application of CLT. So, this paper is intended to study the application of CLT in reading class in detail.

3. Problems caused by traditional teaching methods

The so-called traditional teaching methods include Grammar-Translation Method (GTM), Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), Direct Method, etc. Despite several years" implementation of curriculum reform, teachers in China are just analyzing text in most high schools. There exist quite a few problems in the adoption of traditional teaching methods.

3.1 Fossilization of teaching concepts

In most Chinese high schools, it remains a tough task to get rid of the constraints caused by the exam-oriented education completely. Many high schools still focus on the pass rate of college entrance examination, which is the mere belief that students and teachers strongly hold in high schools. The pressure of passing college entrance examination afflicts teachers and students. No teachers bother to spend much time on fostering students’ abilities, because students have to receive grammar-based examinations. So many teachers are still using old teaching plans and traditional teaching methods.

3.2 Standardization of the evaluation system

For a long time, the main problem in educational evaluation system is that the main emphasis is on screening and selection. At the very beginning, the examination was merely a means of evaluation, but nowadays it has become the final objective of school education now. This has given rise to the exam-oriented education in China. A lot of students lose their learning and developmental opportunities due to the “examination system”. According to Hu Chundong and Wang Cairen (1996: 63), present problems in evaluation system are as follows: first, excessive emphasis on evaluating result; second, overly undue emphasis on the academic achievement; lastly, much attention paid to testing not to students " self-evaluation.

3.3 Loss of the subjective consciousness of students

In a traditional teacher-centered class, the teacher is busy with writing down word explanations and grammar rules on the blackboard while several dozens of students are absent-minded in the classroom. Most of them are taking notes. A typical feature found in the out-dated method for reading teaching is that few interactions between the teacher and students took place in class. The teacher is the only information source in the classroom and students are passive receivers. Such a reading class is held by the teacher tightly. The teacher feeds knowledge to students forcibly instead of motivating them to learn for themselves’ sake. The major task of students is to remember large numbers of words and grammar rules. Consequently, students lose their original initiative and interests. Under this circumstance, most students merely have a command of grammar knowledge, but badly lack communicative ability. In China, it is a frequently-seen phenomenon that a student, who has learnt English for several years, or even more than ten years, can’t communicate with foreigners fluently.

In order to improve students’ communicative competence, teachers should positively pursue new teaching methods for English reading.

4. Communicative Language Teaching

4.1 Definition of CLT

Perhaps, most of the language teachers today have mentioned the term "communicative language teaching" when asked to describe the methods they use in class. Answers, however, vary when they are required to explain “communicative” in detail. The term CLT means different interpretations to different teachers. To some teachers, it means laying stress on speaking English as much as possible in the classroom. To other teachers, communication entails the exchange of unknown information between interlocutors. Despite their various definitions of CLT, all teachers seem to advocate a communicative approach. Communicative Language Teaching can be understood as a set of principles concerning language teaching: how teachers teach the language and how learners learn the language. It refers to an approach that regards communicative competence as its ultimate goal of language acquisition, and that pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language.”(Sanders,1987).

The adoption of CLT is one possible solution to bridge the gap between classroom language teaching and real-life language use. The goal of CLT is to develop students’ communicative competence. The term “Communicative Competence” was first invented by Hedge. Hedge discussed five components of communicative competence, namely, linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, and fluency.

(1)Linguistic competence: It is concerned with knowledge itself, its form and meaning. (Hedge, 2000:46). More specifically, it involves spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, word formation, grammatical structure, sentence structure, and semantics. Hedge emphasizes that linguistic competence is an integral part of communicative competence and that it is wrong to think that CLT does not aim for high standard of linguistic correctness.

(2)Pragmatic competence: It is concerned with the appropriate use of language in social context.

(3)Discourse competence: It refers to one"s ability to create coherent written text or conversation and the ability to understand them (Canale and Swain, 1980).

(4) Strategic competence: It is similar to communication strategies. It refers to strategies one employs when there is communication breakdown due to lack of resources. One can compensate for this by searching for other ways to express himself/ herself, for instance, by using a similar phrase, using a gesture, or using a longer explanation.

(5)Fluency: It means one"s ability to "link units of speech together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue hesitation’ (Hedge, 2000:54).

4.2 Origin of communicative language teaching

The origin of CLT dates back to the 1960s. It was Noam Chomsky"s theory in the 1960s which focuses on competence and performance in language learning that gave rise to communicative language teaching. However, the basis for CLT was laid in the 1970s by linguists Michael Halliday, who studied how language functions are expressed through grammar, and Dell Hymes, who introduced the idea of a wider communicative competence instead of Chomsky"s narrower linguistic competence. The rise of CLT in the 1970s and the early 1980s was partly due to the failure of traditional methods for language teaching and the increase in demand for language learning. Then CLT got its imperial status in language teaching. After nearly 40 years of development, it has gradually developed into a dominant teaching notion universally recognized by the language teaching profession worldwide.

4.3Features and basic principles of applying CLT

An essential point in CLT is that students learn the language through being engaged in a variety of communicative activities. Ellis (1990:31) has listed six features of communicative activities in CLT:

(1) Communicative purpose

In class, the activity must be organized for the communicative purpose rather than just practicing language for its own sake. Therefore, there must be some kinds of ‘information gap’ that students seek to bridge when they are communicating.

1. Communicative desire:

The activity must be interesting enough to stimulate students to communicate. In other words, even if the task of participating in communication in the activity is forced on the students, they still show great interests in communicating with each other.

1. Content, not form:

When students are doing the activity, they must concentrate on what they are saying, not how they say it.

1. No teacher intervention

The activity must be designed to be done by students themselves rather than with the help of the teacher. The teacher should not correct students’ mistakes when students are doing the activity.

1. No materials control:

The activity should not be designed to control what material students should use.

Communicative activities can improve language learners" linguistic performance. Activities in the classroom are mainly composed of group discussions, partner talks and role play. In the application of CLT, there are three generally accepted principles.

(1) Communication principle: attaching importance to students" real communication. Many activities such as communicating with each other will be used in class to promote learning.

(2) Task principle: carrying out meaningful tasks such as supplying a context for learners to promote learning. The purpose of these tasks is to improve students" ability through the practice of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

(3) Meaningfulness principle: emphasizing the importance and meaningfulness of the language for learners.

5. Contrast between Traditional Teaching Methods and CLT

Traditional teaching methods place emphasis on the training of translation ability, i.e. when students are facing a reading comprehension text, the first thing teachers do is to translate all the words into Chinese to help students understand them. Henceforth, it severely constrains students" further understanding about the text. However, Communicative Language Teaching calls for not only students" translation ability but also the ability of expressing feelings and exchanging opinions within a specific context. The effectiveness of reading comprehension will be better due to the interactions in class.

5.1 Contrast in terms of objectives

The objective of traditional reading class is to emphasize that students should take a command of vocabulary and grammar rules rather than developing their reading skills, let alone the cultivation of their reading ability. Under the influence of CLT, language teaching has become more complete. The objectives of using CLT have a broader dimension. Syllabus design takes into consideration not only linguistic and literary aspects of language but also functional and emotional aspects.

5.2 Contrast in terms of roles of teacher and students

In a traditional classroom, the teacher is the host while students are passive receivers. This is also a typical reading teaching model in traditional reading teaching. However, that would never happen in CLT classroom.

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