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论交际法在中学英语教学中的应用(1)(2)

2013-11-03 01:01 3.3.3 Students’ language errors should be accepted
    CLT holds a tolerant attitude to students’ language errors, especially those of grammar. It is assumed that students will inevitably make errors as they learn a new language, and that they need the opportunity to experiment with language, even if that means making mistakes while they do so.[16] If teachers correct every mistakes of students, it will make them nervous for making mistakes, which impedes the communications among students. Besides, students’ purpose of learning a foreign language is to communicate with others by using it. It is not necessary or nearly impossible for them to speak as fluently or suitably as a native people. So teachers may put up with learners’ errors as long as students can exchange their meanings. What teachers should do is only to help students to find errors by themselves. Of course, those serious errors that impede people’s understanding need to be corrected in some proper way.
3.4 Misinterpretations about Communicative Language Teaching in middle school
To implement CLT efficiently, we also should clarify some misinterpretations which have hampered the application of CLT in middle school, Fan Chan provides with a clear picture of the situation as she presents the three fallacies: CLT Stresses Oral English Only; CLT Doesn’t Need Grammar; and limit CLT into social-communicative etiquette. [17]
3.4.1 Fallacy one: CLT stresses oral English only
For its goal is to develop the communicative competence of learners, CLT claims that students should be given more opportunities to speak. Teachers should try to involve learners in all kinds of classroom activities and let them speak out. To teach less and practice more has become many middle school teachers’ motto. Thus some people think that in the CLT, especially in the initial stage, speaking and listening teaching form the content of CLT, excluding teaching of written English, reading and writing. This kind of thought is absolutely a misinterpretation of the CLT.   

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In fact, communication does not include oral practice only. Communication is made up of two parts. Written English is equally as important as oral English. As Widdowson said, “Writing as a physical activity is productive in the same way as speaking is.” [18]The initiators of CLT always emphasize that speaking, listening, reading and writing complement each other indeed.
3.4.2 Fallacy two: CLT doesn’t need grammar
Generally in the CLT, there are two aspects of the reasons for slighting the grammatical teaching: one is because the communicative language is active, by contrast the grammar has too much rules, which is thought to limit communication; the other is that CLT puts emphasis on function. Its instructional resources are organized according to function. Such an arrangement breaks the consistency and completeness of grammar system. One grammar item is scattered into different units and often these units are not connected, but are separated by different grammar items. Those reasons bring a disorderly and unsystematic way of learning grammar, which often frustrates students for they can’t get a clear picture of a grammar item.
    In fact, linguistic competence is a part of communicative competence. It refers to one’s knowledge of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. This means we can not go without grammar. Unless the students have the knowledge of grammar system, he won’t really gain the ability to communicate.
But we should realize that the emphasis of grammatical teaching should be on applying the rules rather than just knowing them; using the language to communicate is much more important than remembering grammar. A good teaching should combine grammar with communicative purpose.
3.4.3 Fallacy Three: Limit CLT into social etiquette
 Quite a few English teachers in the middle school consider that cultivating students’ abilities of applying primary communicative language are to let them know the general knowledge about social etiquette in the western. And the students communicate with the knowledge, such as some codes of behavior, habits of life, taboo, humor, and body language, etc. But they indeed ignore an important factor that to communicate with a language not only need the knowledge of social etiquette but also have to know the deep-rooted culture of the language speaking countries or nations, such as history, geography, economy, politics, education, literature, music, etc. Any type of language has its distinctive source and background of culture. Therefore it is hard to comprehend, express the minds exactly or cultivate students’ linguistic sense effectively without knowing the cultural background of communicative targets.

4. Some suggestions for applying CLT

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   Based on the understanding of CLT and realization of some misinterpretations the writer would like to recommend some suggestions for solving the problems in order to apply CLT better in our middle schools.
4.1 Roles of teacher in a CLT classroom
However, CLT is student-centered, it doesn’t mean the roles of a teacher can be absolutely ignored. Because of the influence of traditional teaching, students are not used to play the center roles, so it is important for teacher to play good roles in helping them. Richards and Rodgers have summed up that a teacher in CLT has two main roles [19]:
The first role is to be a facilitator. Teachers facilitate the communication between students, between students and activities. between students and text. But they should let their students not rely on them totally. If students think teachers’ lessons need them to do nothing, no matter how earnest a teacher is, they will become lazy. Or if they only play the role of passive listeners, they will soon become bored, and their minds will refuse to work. Students should be given opportunities to digest what they learn. If we say teachers use themselves as bridges, on the other hand, they should facilitate students to create bridges themselves too.
The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group. This role is related to the objectives of the first role and arises from it. These two roles imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher: as an organizer of resources, as a resource himself, as a guide in the classroom, and so on.
    Besides teachers are researchers and learners themselves, who contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge, try to use the new methods, do the rethinking and summarize experience from the classroom.
4.2 Integrating CLT with Traditional Method
4.2.1 Teaching grammar in a communicative way  
The most obvious distinction between Traditional Method and CLT is that the former emphasizes on grammatical knowledge while the latter emphasize on communicative competence. But it does not mean CLT does not teach grammar. The writer has explained it in part 3.4.2. Grammatical teaching is also an indispensable part of CLT. Therefore integrated CLT with Traditional Method, firstly we should solve the problem that how to teach grammar in a communicative way. Following are the ideas summed up from Wang Qiang’s book A Course in English Language Teaching[20]
To teach grammar in a communicative way involves two main aspects: grammar presentation; and grammar practice.
Firstly, grammar presentation is concerned with how to make the students understand or discover grammar rules. There are two methods for present grammar:  the deductive method and the inductive method.
In the deductive method, there are four steps: (1) Give students an example, write it down on the blackboard (e.g, I went to school last night.);(2) Underlie the rule. (e.g, I went to school last night.); (3) Explain the grammar for students (It is the simple past tense) This job is often done in the student’s native language; (4) Let students practice applying the rule to produce sentences with given prompts (e.g, film,  last Sunday evening-----I saw a film last Sunday evening.) This method has three disadvantages: (1) it teaches grammar in an isolated way; (2) little attention is paid to meaning; (3) the practice is often mechanical.
Inductive method is carried out as those following steps: (1) Give students a set of examples to induce them realize grammar rules without any form of explicit explanations (e.g This is a book. These are books. This is a pen. These are pencils, etc.) (2) Invited students to apply the newly learned structure to produce sentences with given visual aids or verbal prompts.(e,g.  T: What is this? A picture of computer is given. S: This is a computer. ); (3) Finally, but optionally, the teacher may elicit the grammar rule from the students.
In practice, the distinction between these two methods is not always apparent. Perhaps a blend between the two is indeed more appropriate.
Secondly, grammar practice that helps the students to develop grammatical ability. It is believed that both mechanical practice and meaningful practice are necessary. Teachers can use prompts for practice, such as picture prompts, mime or gesture prompts, information sheet prompts, key phrase or key words prompts, and created situation prompts.
4.2.2 Integrating the four skills in CLT
Integrating CLT with Traditional Method also can be considered as integrating skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in the classroom. Following is an example to integrate the four skills training: listening and note-taking using audio/video materials. The steps are summed up as follows: [21]
(1) Ask students what they know or think about the topic; (2) Play a short sequence of the tape and ask students to take guided notes on a sheet provided, or ask them to note down the most important points that they hear, or the most interesting points; (3) Make students do a discussion work on the topic; (4) Then the students could be asked to restrict the overall “message” of the tape from their own notes; (5) The teacher hands out a transcript of this section of the tape for immediate feedback and self-correction.
In this way, students achieved natural integration of skills-----primarily listening, note-taking (writing), and speaking, but also reading (through note to reconstruct the text).
4.3 Dealing effectively with a large class
    In the part2.2.2 of this paper the writer has mentioned that a large class would affect the result of CLT in middle school. Following are some suggestions to solve this problem: [22]
4.3.1 Using pair work and group work
   Group work is more dynamic in many ways than individual work: there are people to react with and against in a group and therefore a greater possibility of discussion and communication between the students. From the Q5 in the questionnaire, we can find out that students are more willing to talk with one person, or a certain number of people who they are more familiar to. It is helpful to create a relaxed and friendly atmosphere for students to overcome their shyness and nervousness.
4.3.2. Getting students to do as much interactive work as possible
    If students do plenty of “get-acquainted” activities at the beginning, they will feel each of them is a part of a community and is not just lost in the crowd.

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4.3.3 Using chorus reaction
Since it becomes difficult to use a lot of individual repetition and controlled practice in a big group, it may be more appropriate to ask students to practice in chorus. The class can be divided into two halves, the left-hand and right-hand sides of the classroom. Each half can then do a part of a dialogue, ask or answer a question, repeat sentences or words. This is especially useful at lower levels.
4.3.4 Thinking about vision and acoustics
Big classes often are in big classrooms so the teacher’s voice will take into account. Teachers have to make sure that what they show can be seen and that what they say or play to the whole group can be heard.
4.4 Stimulating students’ communicative motivation
In the part 2.2.3 we have realized that majority of students in middle school in China have lost their communicative motivation. In China today the main motivation for learning the majority of foreign languages is clearly instrumental. So under a foreign language context, how to stimulate students’ communicative motivation? It mainly relies on teacher’s teaching content, teaching method, and organization of teaching. Following are some ways:
4.4.1Set up specific communicative goals to make students gain the successful experiences 
The goal is the source of motivation. Provide students the long-term goal and short-term goals. The latter will make students win the feeling of achievement, and find it is possible to make the long-term goal come true. The more possible it is the more it will stimulate students. Besides, at the beginning of a class, teachers should propose the goals for this period to make students have desires to reach them, which stimulate students’ learning motivation.
4.4.2 Reform the class teaching mode
Class should be student-centered. Teachers should deal well with the relations among the demonstration, instruct and self-study of students. Some communicative activities will be designed around a certain subject and general knowledge. Students will feel, understand and apply language in the happy activities. Through doing things by using language students’ interests, feeling of achievement, self-confidences and communicative motivation are developed. （科教作文网 zw.nseac.com整理）
4.4.3 Set up a pleasant and harmonious atmosphere in classroom
   Teacher should emphasize on the process of communication rather than the result, which can increase the anxiety of students. Thus students will not be afraid of making mistakes and dare open their mouth to speak English and participate in communicative activities. Their communicative motivations are stimulated.
4.4.4Carry out competitions suitably
Competitions are effective method to stimulate students’ communicative motivation. Because competitions can call up one’s superiority, and meet one’s psychological need to get recognition and praise from other persons. The way of competition should integrate those between oneself and past, between individuals, and between groups. However, competing over frequently will make students nervous, can not stimulate them.
4.5 Correcting errors in a proper way
Direct correction is unnecessary especially comments like: “You’re completely wrong.” “Another mistake.” “What’s wrong with you? ”, since it is likely to have a negative effect on the students’ willingness to try to express themselves freely, or , even worse, to be detrimental to the objective of lowering the affective filters. In an encouraging way, we may say, “Just relax.” or “Try your best to follow the talk. Don’t think about the grammatical rules.” or “Never mind, everyone learns from his own mistakes.”
In some cases, direct correction may be handled properly where this is necessary. There is possibility that the student’s utterance is appropriate and well-formed, but they only pronounce the words incorrectly. In this case, the teacher can simply use the mispronounced lexical item in an expanded answer. For example:
Teacher: This woman is wearing red       (Pointing to a blouse).
Student: Blouse. (He mispronounces the word.)
Teacher: Yes that’s right. She is wearing a blouse (using right pronunciation of the word).
As a matter of fact, mistakes as slips of the tongue or pen caused purely by psychological conditions or factors, for example, tension and tiredness, may be ignored completely. Only those errors that impede people’s understanding need to be corrected.

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4.6 Making a proper communicative test
    Testing plays an important role in English teaching in middle schools. It may affect the teaching content, teaching methods, the learning strategies and attitudes of students. Although the teaching concept, teaching syllabus, teaching materials have changed, the traditional views of testing still influence us in the English testing. The content of testing is only based on linguistic knowledge while written examination is the only form of testing. This means English testing as an evaluation method can not keep up with the steps of English teaching reform in Chinese middle school now. It is necessary to make a proper communicative test.
    Weir has proposed some principles in designing a communicative testing as follows: [23]
(a) Testing should be interactive;
(b) Direct in nature with tasks reflecting realistic discourse processing activities;
(c) Texts and tasks should be relevant to the intended situation of the target population;
(d) Ability should be sampled within meaningful and developing contexts;
(e) The test should be based on an explicit a priori specification
    Besides, Weir has put forward something that should be paid attention to in the test operation: [24]
    This stage concerned with preparing for and conducting the first actual operation of a new test involves the following aspects: the preparation, printing and distribution of appropriate information manuals for candidates, receiving institutions, invigilators and markers.
    When a new type of test comes out, sample tests should be carried out, which could enable candidates to be familiar with test procedures. The example of test formats and information on how answers have to be recorded should be made available in advance.
4.7 Improving teachers’ proficiency in using English
In part 2.2.7 above, the writer pointed out non-native teachers in China are with a lack of English proficiency. This problem can not be solved in a short time. Teachers should pay their attentions to accumulate information about the society, and cultural context of the target language. By careful study of the students and instructional materials, planning lessons thoughtfully, and practicing their own English in every possible way, teachers will become more confident and our English will improve. Following are some specific suggestions: （科教论文网 Lw.nsEAc.com编辑整理）
▪Listen to English on the radio, television, videos and cassettes;
▪ Read anything we find that is in English;
▪ Use a bilingual dictionary to learn new words;
▪ Write down any new words around us;
▪ Regularly study a grammar book.

5. Conclusion
CLT aims at developing the students’ communicative ability. It is necessary and desirable for the teachers to try this approach in the middle school at present. But they also should realize the problems existing in the application of CLT. They need to learn to use the correct strategies to solve the problems, breaking the obstacles without falling into the misinterpretation.
Besides, CLT alone can not solve all the problems and overcome difficulties that are encountering teachers of English in China. We should try to find out some better solutions to deal with them and improve the teaching of English in our middle schools.

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