（教育学专业论文）论信息差原理在英语专业口语教学中的应用.pdf

硕硕 士士 学学 位位 论论 文文 （专业学位）（专业学位） 论文题目论文题目 论信息差原理在英语专业论信息差原理在英语专业 口语教学中的应用口语教学中的应用 on the application of “information gap” principle in teaching spoken english for english majors 专业学位名称专业学位名称 全日制教育硕士全日制教育硕士 方向领域名称方向领域名称 学科教学（英语）学科教学（英语） 申请人姓名申请人姓名 秦利民秦利民 指指 导导 教教 师师 惠敏惠敏 教授教授 杜凤霞杜凤霞 老师老师 论文提交时间论文提交时间 20122012 年年 6 6 月月 8 8 日日 单单 位位 代代 码码 1044510445 学学 号号 20100230232010023023 分分 类类 号号 g633.4g633.4 学学 习习 方方 式式 全日制全日制 on the application of “information gap” principle in teaching spoken english for english majors submitted by qin limin supervisor: hui min du fengxia submitted to foreign language college of shandong normal university in candidacy for the degree of master of education shandong normal university jinan, china june, 2012 独独 创创 声声 明明 本人声明所呈交的学位论文是本人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的 研究成果。据我所知，除了文中特别加以标注和致谢的地方外，论文中不包含其 他人已经发表或撰写过的研究成果，也不包含为获得 （注：如 没有其他需要特别声明的，本栏可空）或其他教育机构的学位或证书使用过的材 料。 与我一同工作的同志对本研究所做的任何贡献均已在论文中作了明确的说明 并表示谢意。 学位论文作者签名： 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解 学校学校 有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，有权保 留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和磁盘，允许论文被查阅和借阅。 本人授权 学校学校 可以将学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索， 可 以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存、汇编学位论文。 （保密的学位论文在 解密后适用本授权书） 学位论文作者签名： 导师签字： 签字日期：20 年 月 日 签字日期：20 年 月 日 contents abstract in english.i abstract in chinese.iv introduction.1 1. background of the study.1 2. significance of the study.3 3. organization of the study.3 chapter one literature review.5 1.1 history of spoken language teaching methods.5 1.2 features of communicative language teaching.7 1.3 current situation of spoken language teaching in china.8 chapter two theoretical discussion.10 2.1 communicative principle.10 2.2 information and information gap.13 2.3 related research on ig principle.15 chapter three an empirical study.18 3.1 purpose of the research.18 3.2 participants in the research.19 3.2.1 students.19 3.2.2 teachers.20 3.3 instruments and procedures.20 3.3.1 questionnaires.20 3.3.2 interviews.21 3.3.3 class observations.21 3.3.4 pre-tests and post-tests.22 3.3.5 spss software.22 3.4 data collection and analysis.22 3.5 results and discussion.24 3.5.1 questionnaire results and discussion.24 3.5.1.1 questionnaire results from the students.24 3.5.1.2 questionnaire results from the teachers.28 3.5.2 analysis on the interviews29 3.5.3 test score analysis and discussion30 chapter four suggestions for ig principle in teaching spoken english for english majors.34 4.1 the teachers teaching.34 4.1.1 the transition of teachers role.34 4.1.2 the incorporation of ig principle in teaching activities.36 4.2 the students participation.39 4.2.1 the interest and motivation in participating in the class activities.39 4.2.2 the communicative fluency and grammar accuracy in speaking english40 4.3 suggestions for further development.41 conclusions.43 1. major findings.43 2. limitations of the research.44 3. suggestions for further research.44 bibliography.46 acknowledgements.50 appendix i. .51 appendix ii. .53 appendix iii. 55 appendix iv. 57 abstract based on the “information-gap” (ig) principle, the experimental method is employed in this thesis to explore the effectiveness of the communicative language teaching (clt) in the english majors oral english class for the improvement of spoken english. as is known to us all, language is the vehicle for human communication. the goal of english language teaching is considered to enable learners to use english in ways which are communicatively effective and appropriate, that is, to gain communicative competence. among the basic english skills, spoken english is the important symbol of language output. however, the teaching of spoken english is far from being satisfactory. from primary school to high school, spoken english has never been paid too much attention, which directly leads to english majors poor performance in spoken english after the university enrollment and should be improved with great efforts. over the years, great achievements have been obtained on cultivating the students abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing by adopting traditional english teaching approaches. however, facts have shown that these approaches are obviously lack of credibility and efficiency, which are not suitable for oral english practice, which aims at improving the students oral english skill. therefore, its absolutely essential to research how to improve students oral ability by constant and effective practice. the ig principle is one of the most basic principles in communicative language teaching (clt), which has become the main concern of english teachers and researchers. arguably, language communication is established on the basis of the information gap. that is to say, in the english language teaching, if there is no information gap, theres no real communication. having reviewed the theoretical foundations and the related studies of information gap, the author employs information-gap principle in oral english teaching and explores the feasibility and effectiveness of information gap principle in oral english class. in this thesis an i empirical study is carried out. fifty-four freshmen of english major participate in the research. two parallel classes were randomly divided into an experimental class and a control class. during the empirical study which lasted about 15 weeks, the author carries out teaching activities involving a series of information-gap tasks in the experimental class while adopts traditional teaching methods in the control class. the researcher applied spss15.0, by means of tests, interviews, and questionnaires for gathering the data. finally, some results were got after the analysis of these data in a qualitative and quantitative way. the results indicate that it is feasible to improve the students spoken english by applying information gap principle in oral english teaching. the students could make great progress in terms of oral ability. improvement in fluency and accuracy is obvious. the results also show that this model of teaching can motivate the students in language learning. the thesis consists of three parts，which is organized in the following way: part one is the preface. this part gives a brief description about the history of the study of spoken language teaching and the current situation of ig research at home and abroad. part two is the body, which divides into three chapters. chapter one is the theoretical discussion, which introduces some theories related to the spoken language teaching and learning and displays the basic theory of “information” and “information-gap” principle. its theoretical basis is discussed in detail here. chapter two concerns the research, which provides detailed descriptions of the methodology of this thesis, including the purpose, the subjects concerned, the instruments employed, the procedures for data collection and data analysis, the results of this research and discussions along with the reporting in great detail. chapter three concentrates on the specific application of ig principle in teaching spoken english for english majors, in which we discusses the transfers of the teacher and the students from different perspectives. it is suggested that it is quite necessary to apply information-gap principle in oral english class and the students will be sure to benefit a lot from it. part three is the concluding part. it first makes a conclusion about the research ii and then summarizes the major findings. finally, the limitations of the present study and suggestions for future research are summarized. key words: communicative language teaching (clt); information-gap principle; spoken english teaching; effectiveness category number: g633.4 iii 摘要摘要 本论文主要采用实证研究的方法，探讨基于“信息差”原理的交际教学法对 于英语专业学生在英语口语课堂中提高其口语水平的有效性。 众所周知，语言是交际的工具，英语教学的目的在于培养学生运用英语进行 交际的能力。在英语的基本技能中，口语能力是语言输出的重要体现。然而，口 语教学的现状却不容乐观。从小学到中学，口语教学一直不受重视，致使英语专 业的学生的口语能力也很低下，需要下大功夫培养。多年来，采用传统教学法教 学在夯实学生听说读写的基本功方面取得了可喜的成绩， 但这种教学模式应用于 口语操练以提高学生的口语能力的技巧方面却明显缺乏可信度和效率。因此，研 究如何提高学生口语水平是十分必要的。 “信息差”是英语交际教学法中最基本的原理之一，在交际教学中越来越引 起英语教师的关注。可以说，言语交际是建立在信息差基础上的，没有信息差， 就没有真实的交际。在综述信息差理论基础和相关研究的基础上，本文提出口语 教学中的交际活动应基于信息差原则， 并通过教学实验来探究在英语口语课堂教 学中运用信息差原理来提高学生口语的可行性和有效性。 作者任课班级的五十四 名英语专业的学生参加了此次教学实验，两个平行班随机分为实验班和控制班。 在为期十五周的教学实验中， 作者在实验班的口语课上开展了一系列信息差任务 的教学，而在控制班采用传统教学法。此项研究通过问卷、测试、访谈、对比等 方法收集数据，利用 spss15.0 统计软件进行数据分析，最后采用定性分析和定 量分析相结合的方法得出实验结果。分析结果显示，在英语口语课堂中运用信息 差原理来提高学生口语水平的办法是可行的， 信息差任务对学生口语流利度和准 确性的提高有显著效果，同时证明该教学模式也有助于促进学生学习动机，有利 于第二语言习得。 本论文共分三个部分。 第一部分是前言，阐述了该研究的必要性，列举了笔者在教学实践中观察到 的课堂教学现状，简要介绍了本研究的背景和目的，并将运用信息差原理的教学 模式与传统教学模式进行了对比，阐述了本论文的组织结构。 iv 第二部分论文正文部分，分三个章节。第一章是文献综述，概述了口语教学 的历史和相关研究以及交际教学法的特征， 总结了英语口语教学研究的国际情况 以及目前我国口语教学的现状。第二章是理论阐述，论述了信息差的理论基础， 并总结了对信息差任务的相关研究。第三章是实证研究，详细介绍了在英语口语 课堂中笔者使用信息差任务的研究，包括研究的目的、参与者、工具、方法和过 程，以及实验收集的数据和结果的分析和阐述，并得出结论。第四章主要论述了 信息差原理在英语专业口语教学中的具体应用，从教师和学生两方面提出建议。 对教师来说，意味着角色的转变和实际教学活动的转变。对学生来说，主要是兴 趣、学习动机、参与积极性以及口语流利度的显著提高。从而更加明确了采用信 息差原理进行口语教学的可行性。 第三部分是结论篇，笔者提出了所得结论，总结了研究的主要发现，并分析 了研究中存在的不足之处，对未来研究提出一些建议。 关键词关键词：交际教学法；信息差；英语专业口语教学；效果 分类号：分类号：g633.4 v _ 山东师范大学教育硕士学位论文_ 1 introduction 1. background of the study it is well-known that language is the vehicle for human communication. the aim of english teaching is to develop the learners communicative competence, which has been widely accepted by english teaching fields in china and abroad. from an objective perspective, the globalization of economy and information drives people from different countries to communicate more frequently than ever before, and english, as the most frequently used communicative tool, has become more and more important. naturally, following this trend, english education has been highlighted since the opening and reform in china, during which college english teaching is even paid more attention to for the sake of directly affecting the quality of talent training. however, after 30 years teaching reforms on english education, our students english proficiency is still far away from what we have expected. in our country, many english majors can pass tem-4 and even tem-8 as they have been trained to be good at grammar and vocabulary, but only a few of them can speak english fluently, let alone communicating with native speakers due to the great lack of doing practical communication. according to the authors observation, roughly there exist two reasons for this phenomenon: for one thing, traditional teaching methods, such as grammar-translation method, sentence-text-analysis method and ppp method are typical “teacher-centered methods”, which still pay attention to teaching basic knowledge of language and emphasize practicing pattern drills and imitations mechanically. in such classrooms which are dominated by the teacher, the students have no appealing positivity to take part in the activities. gradually, they will lose interests in studying english. and more, much more than this, the deep-rooted english language teaching tradition can hardly be changed within a short time; for another, there must be something wrong in the teaching process. it cant be denied a basic fact that nowadays more and more language teachers have been aware of the disadvantages of the abovementioned methods and try to take different teaching methods. the question is that there is a _ 山东师范大学教育硕士学位论文_ 2 need to focus language teaching on communicative proficiency and developing their communicative competence while the students are in fact lack of opportunities of training their spoken english in real context and there is a mismatch between what students have learnt in class and real life. these problems directly result in the poor communicative ability which is far from the demand of the times. the reasons that particular students who only acquire some “dumb english” after many years efforts and hard study are no doubt various and multi-dimensional, but the negligence of the information-gap principle by teachers should be the main factor. it is the absence of information gap in the language teaching process that makes it non-communicative. in the 1960s and 1970s, the communicative approach (ca) rises, which draws attention of many teachers. as one of the basic principles in communicative language teaching, “information-gap” (ig) principle has also drawn more and more attention from the english teachers. johnson and morrow had recognized the value of information gap activities in the language classroom 30 years ago, and called the concept that it is “one of the most fundamental in the whole area of communicative teaching”(1981:62). swan (1985) asserted that information gap is a fundamental principle of nowadays language teaching methodology. doughty and pica (1986) noted that information gaps can promote real communication and facilitate language acquisition. harmer (1991:126) said, “communication games are based on the principle of the information gap”. in a word, “information gap” plays a vital role in communication. it is the premise for real communication because it is the existing information gap that makes people feel necessary to communicate. by communication people may narrow or fill the information gap and reach a balance of information. and in the process of information conveyance, peoples communicative competence develops. therefore, the proper application of information-gap principle in college english class is of great importance. with all these statements in mind, an empirical study will be carried out in this paper to testify the hypothesis that the adoption of information-gap principle in english spoken language teaching is feasible and effective in training _ 山东师范大学教育硕士学位论文_ 3 communicatively competent talents. 2. significance of the study along with the coming of the information age and the development of business transactions throughout the world, a large number of people with good command of english are greatly needed, and being capable of speaking fluently has emerged recently as one of the basic requirements of modern people in the global village. but up till now, our instruction of foreign language is still following the traditional foreign language teaching theory and mode. with the development of the society, its disadvantages are becoming increasingly obvious. this kind of teaching method isnt suitable for the wider and wider scope of foreign exchange that china is expanding, and cant meet our countrys needs for the high quality talent. under the circumstances, it is essential for us to adopt the new teaching approach in order to develop the students ability to comprehend language and improve their communicative ability. this paper proves the importance of implementing the information-gap principle in the spoken english classroom since we have recognized that developing the students communicative speaking skill is one of our most important goals in language teaching. the ig principle offers us an unlimited realm of options and ideas for encouraging and enhancing students speaking proficiency. with the impact of global economic integration and our countrys entry into wto, the connection between our country and the external world is closer, and the study of foreign language is more closely linked with the peoples daily life. under the circumstances, what the society needs most is the teaching method of foreign language that can improve the peoples ability to make use of foreign language effectively. therefore, it is exactly urgent to meet the needs of the new national conditions and the students requirements to carry out the new teaching approach. 3. organization of the study the thesis consists of three parts，which is organi