Influences of class size on class room English learning 英语毕业论文.doc

contents摘 要iiabstractiii1introduction12 large-class teaching in college english22.1 definition of large class22.2 influences of class size on class room english learning32.3 advantages32.3.1. save the number of the teachers32.3.2 combine the class teaching with the use of multimedia courseware teaching32.3.3 large-classes have a relaxed classroom atmosphere42.4 disadvantages43. ways to promote the teaching effects63.1 transform the teaching ideas63.2 use modern teaching methods73.3 research on cooperative learning73.3.1 cooperation learning83.3.2 implication of cooperative learning94. conclusion10bibliography12acknowledgements13摘 要为了满足全球化的需要， 我国自从1999年以来扩大了各高校的招生以普及国民的高等素质。由此，大学英语教学的班级人数也越来越多，大学英语大班教学是目前我国高等院校中普遍采用的外语教学的主要形式，但同时，随着素质教育的理念对学校教育的渗透和大学英语教学的目标从传授语言的知识向培养学生交际能力的转变，大班英语教学的问题变得越发突出。问题有:学生学习更为被动，反馈信息难以及时传递，口语实践机会趋于减少。英语教师面对这些问题，有必要采取积极地措施去解决。本文拟从大学英语大班教学的背景，优点，缺点等 三方面论述大学英语大班教学，以期提高大学英语大班教学的效果，提高学生的综合能力。关键词：大学英语；大班课堂；课堂教学abstractwith the determination to popularize the higher education among the common people, china has been broadening the recruitment in the institution of higher education since 1999 to meet the need of globalization. as a result, the class size in college english teaching becomes larger and larger. teaching college english in large classes is the main format of foreign language teaching commonly adopted in colleges and universities in our country at present. meanwhile, the quality system education is carried on more and more widely, and the goal of college english teaching is transforming from imparting linguistic knowledge to cultivating students communicative competence. the problems are becoming more clearly. resulting in such problems as the students passive learning attitude, the difficulty in giving and receiving feedback in time, the less oral practicing time. for the english teachers facing such challenges, it is necessary to take some effective to solve these problems.the thesis is from three aspects about the background、advantages、and disadvantages of the college english class to discusses college english class, to enhance the effect of the college english class, improve students ability. key words: the college english; the large class; the effect of teaching111introductionsince the enrollment expansion in 1999, due to the college english teaching resources is limited, classes scales has become larger and larger. however, with the gradual penetration of the quality education to the school education, the purpose of english teaching has changed from imparting language knowledge to cultivating the students communicative competence, english teaching problems in the large class are becoming more and more serious, and it directly affects the improvement of teaching quality.the consecutive years of enrollment in colleges has a contradiction between the increasing number of the students, the existing foreign language teachers and the teaching equipment. according to the national public british teaching steering committee statistics, english teachers and the students scales has reached 1:130 or so, so facing so many students, how many teachers can complete the teaching task with the traditional class type teaching? in some universities including a lot of key universities, the teachers add the teaching workload, and more teachers are added in the schools. for the majority of the universities, the problem of teachers shortage has become common, which seriously affects the teaching quality. therefore, it is also a kind of inevitability to expand the class sizes in many universities.with the constant expansion of the class size, the large class can hold fifty or more than fifty students. through the research of the college english large class teaching, it will improve the students learning enthusiasm, active the classroom atmosphere, and add the chance of the communication between students and teachers. the author thinks the most important goal of large-class english teaching is to cultivate the students independent ability and improve the learning results. besides, another goal is to make full use of the students main role, and require teachers to change their roles, locate their role accurately, from the knowledge of imparter into the teaching activities organizers and participants. the teachers should be the promoter that let the students grasp the language knowledge and develop their communicative ability; the teachers also can be the inspirer who encourages students to learn the language; and a consultant or an assessor who help students learn language. there are three main significances: for students, students can take an interest in learning english and promote their scores; for teachers, they can change the former teaching pattern, teachers can not only teach but also mobilize the enthusiasm of the students, and the atmosphere of the class will be more active than before. for the development of the english teaching, the progress of teaching development will be more quickly, during the english teaching, teachers can make full use of the various methods to communicate with students,besides,teaching mode will be more standardized.2 large-class teaching in college english class2.1 definition of large classthis question is “how large is large” is put forward by coleman (1989, cited in zhaogrimshaw 2004/2005),who is very interested in large-class english language teaching. while the size of the class is a relative conception(locostro,2001),it may contain only one teacher and one student, or may be as many as more than 50 students or even more. there is not a rigid quantitative criterion to set the definition of the “large-class, as a perception of this will vary from context to context”(hayes,1997),h.coleman defined the class of 50 students as a large one(coleman,1989, 1989, cited in zhaogrimshaw 2004/2005) and p.ur(1996) defined it as one with 40-50 students. in this paper, a large class refers to one with more than 50 students. in authors opinion, the author thinks the large class can hold more than 50 students, although the teacher can save more time to teach all the students, the students cant grasp well. so, the author thinks it has both advantages and disadvantages.2.2 influences of class size on class room english learningwith the expansion of english language classrooms, it is fairly risky to exactly follow the conventionally managed teacher-fronted model which will inevitably bring some negative influence in large-class english language teaching and learning(coleman,2002).and locastro(2001) sums up the influence of large class size on foreign language teaching from three main perspectives, that is, pedagogically, affectively and classroom management.2.2.1 advantages2.2.1.1 save the number of the teachers the large-class english teaching can save the number of the teachers and alleviate the present situation about the lack of the teaching staffs to a large extent. the investigation china education and research network shows that in 1999, china has decided to expand enrollment on the basis of the original plan of higher education ，and then clearly stated the target that the gross enrollment rate for higher education in 2005 is 15% , which officially launched the development path of the popularization of higher education in china. the implementation of the policy makes our higher education develop quickly. focus on the situation that the number of university admissions increase with ages in the country, the number of teachers cannot match it, so the large-class teaching in college english can reduce the cost of education of individual students and ease the teacher shortage problem to a certain extent2.2.1.2 combine the class teaching with the use of multimedia courseware teachingthe guiding ideology of college english teaching reform is to improve students english comprehensive ability, especially the listening and speaking skills. the new mode of teaching is reflected by the principles of the integration about the practicality, culture and entertainment of the english teaching. teaching grammar, reading comprehension writing and translation skills by using the large-class teaching, through these content learning, students can lay a solid foundation in english, acquire a certain amount of examination skills. explaining this content in class does not require students to practice listening and speaking, so it is not subject to the restrictions of class size. in the country, multimedia has been widely used in the field of teaching english class.for these circumstances above, the application of multimedia teaching should be determined to improve the effect of the large-class teaching in college english, and with reference to the successful experience of foreign countries to improve teaching effectiveness.2.2.1.3 have a relaxed classroom atmospherethrough the survey of students, we found that the students do care about the classroom atmosphere. the majority of students believe that the classroom atmosphere is active, at the same time, and it can arouse personal positive thinking, students have more time to think about their own time at their disposal in the large class. the number of the large class is much, so many students can come out different views and will express their views boldly for the same question during the process of giving lecture, so it can create a good classroom atmosphere, it is essential for students to participate in training, analysis, and cultivate their ability of solving problems. besides, students will have a sense of autonomy, sense of achievement, the sense of belonging and curiosity in the large-class teaching, some people think that the number of students can also help teachers, in a large class, students can be organized the groups to discuss questions. hess ( 2001:2 - 3 ) pointed out, organizing group activities will be more interesting, teachers and students will not be tired, and teachers can improve their professional level.felder ( 1997) are very optimistic about the idea, he believed that teachers who teaches large classes will have the sense of achievement greatly.2.2.2 disadvantagesalthough large-class teaching has some advantage, it also brings a lot of serious negative impacts. teachers and students will have more pressure in the large class, the teachers generally considered: people will consume a lot of strength, and feel uncomfortably in the large class, besides, the classroom discipline and teaching effect is difficult to control, and it is easy to overlook the students individual needs, teachers can not conduct a comprehensive examination of student work, the feedback in classroom is poor, so teachers sometimes may think they do not try their best to teach. teachers want students to be able to learn something, but it is difficult to care about each student in the large class, it always takes a long time to recognize students. in addition, teachers and students have less time to communicate. there is less chance for students to perform themselves.pedagogically, in the large class, it will be more difficult for the teacher to carry out all those speaking, reading and writing activities or communicative tasks as far as the individualizing efforts are concerned. the decreased opportunity for teacher-student interaction makes it hard for the teacher to monitor the students work as well as receiving and giving feedback. the more difficulties in interaction implementation between students and students makes their language practicing be inadequate.affectively, large-class teaching will make it more difficult for the student to establish a good rapport with the students to be acquainted with their interest and fettle. both the teacher and the students tend to have a feeling of being neglected.from the perspective of classroom management, there are also several problems existing in large-class teaching. for example, students easily allow themselves to skip classes both“ in a dominant or recessive sense”(李旭，2003:9) and the problem of classroom discipline is more serious, affecting both teaching and learning. in addition, the teacher has to correct more assignments, which is actually impossible to give the feedback in time.in other words, the large class size of english language classrooms tends to make the students more passive and the classroom atmosphere more boring with less assuring teaching results. 3. ways to promote the teaching effectsfacing the advantages and disadvantages of the large-class english teaching, we should take appropriate and effective measures to improve the main problems in college english class.3.1 transform the teaching ideas transforming the teaching idea is the key in foreign language teaching reform. teachers and students should fully understand the cet is an examination form, it can not be used as an only standard to measure the teachers teaching level and the students english level. the college english teaching projects is not just to pass the cet, however, it is the main purpose to develop students comprehensive capabilities namely listening, speaking, reading, writing, translation ability, and good psychological quality, and the ability to respond. for this reason, the steering committee of the ministry of education, college english teaching experts are discussing to develop the new teaching basic requirements. we should strengthen the cultivation about students listening and speaking abilities, emphasis on reading comprehension, translation skills and writing ability, pay more attention and emphasis to the dependent study that regard the students as subject of learning, and promote personalized learning. therefore, the teaching mode should be transferred from the teaching for the examination to the teaching for developing the students abilities in the college english class. at the same time, we should combine the basic national conditions of chinas education, to establish the appropriate teaching objectives. thus we will make the further planning about the college english class.3.2 use modern teaching methodsimplementation of informationization teaching is an inevitable requirement for the development of the college english class and an inevitable trend. the development direction of the teaching informationization is the implementation of the education network and that is, teachers teach students through multimedia classrooms and campus networks. new informationitation teaching enables large-class english class teaching towards the individual learning, the college english class model should combine the informationization teaching mode and the classroom teaching, which can be as the main development direction. ministry of education also had issued “notice” to carry out the pilot reform of college english teaching work and develop the teaching of modern educational technology, especially network, we should take advantages of the multimedia technology to build personalized college english teaching mode and improve college students english language ability. therefore, taking full advantage of the modern teaching methods teaching mode and using the implementation of informationition technology is the only way to to improve the large-class english class.3.3 application of cooperation learning methodthe reason for adopting cooperative learning can be justified from two perceptive, that is, from the perceptive of different goal structures and the comparison between the cooperative learning method and the traditional whole-class method. as is well-known that krashens “comprehensible input” is the basic condition for the successful language acquisition. cooperative learning provides the students with a lot of activities, during which their conversation adjustments and verbal scaffolding in the process of the interaction or meaning negotiation help to offer them a lot of comprehensible input. at the same time, cooperative learning creates situation for the students to practice their target language and generate a great deal of “comprehensible output”, which is also believed to be an indispensible factor contributing to language learning. cooperative learning can bring forth the better performance in students achievement specifically their english speaking ability. most of the students in the large-class welcome this approach because they believe it has improved their all-around language abilities as well as some developments in other aspects concerning their interest, thinking, self-confidence and social skills and so on. inference can also be drawn from the experiment that is important take into consideration such factors as students interest, group dynamics and the positive teacher and learner behavior in the learning process in order to contribute to the successful cooperative learning.4. conclusion after analyzing the present english language situation, it is evident that traditional knowledge-transmission approach prevents chinese students from developing their language skills because little interaction between the students occurs for authentic and meaningful communication. and the common phenomenon of large-class english language teaching in china adds more difficulties not only in classroom management but also in promote student-student interaction of their active learning.the large-class english teaching is the common method in many universities. the advantages about the teaching are obviouse: ease the tense situation of the teaching, maximize the advantage of the existing teaching resources, cultivate more people who will do more contribution for the society. but the disadvantages are also obvious, firstly, cultivating the students individuals will be ignored, and it is not conducive to the development of students la