皖西学院 2009 届本科毕业论文（设计）
ChapterⅠ Introduction
The application of methodology is always closely connected with times.
In times of economic globalization, people with different languages in
different countries communicate with each other more and more
frequently. And what emerges at the times require is the Communicative
Language Teaching (CLT).
The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is, on the one hand, the
product of the development of sociolinguistics, etc.; on the other hand, it
is the results of the prosperity of Western Europe. Just as China at the
turn of the century, Western Europe also needs a linguistic terrace to
achieve the goal of communication. Thus the upsurge of the CLT has its
deep-rooted background. But what we can not ignore is….
Chinese foreign language teachers tend to complete their training at
home. It’s no hard to imagine their authentic mastery of a foreign
language. In addition, due to the continual rigid examination system in
China, the “jug-mug” teaching model has been deep-rooted in this land.
The rigid examination system drives teachers and students….
Since CLT was introduced by Chinese scholars from western countries
and applied in Chinese context, its effect has been being a hot topic. So
through expounding the background and characteristics of CLT and
analyzing the survey of CLT used in China, the author discusses the
limitations and feasibilities of its use in Chinese context, which is
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expected to help Chinese teachers of English make best use of the
teaching approach in China.
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ChapterⅡ Literature Review
Through tracing back the origin and the development of CLT and
presenting its proponents’ various definitions, the author can see it is
common to all that communicative approaching in language teaching
starts from a theory of communication and has the aim to develop
procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge
the independence of language and communication. The paper firstly
makes a general study of CLT, including the background, the definition
and the characteristics of CLT.
2.1 Background of CLT
The origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are to be found
in the changes in the British language teaching tradition dating from the
late 1960s. At that time, the major British approach to teaching English as
a foreign language was Situational Language Teaching, in which
language was taught by practicing basic structures in meaningful
situation-based activities. Some British linguists began to ….
With the increased interdependence of European common market, the
council of Europe found it urgent to develop alternative methods for
developing courses, which focused on the needs of European learners.
Wilkins proposes a functional or communicative definition of language
that could serve as a basis for developing communicative syllabi for
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language teaching (Wilkins, 1978: 165). His communicative analysis
was ….
2.2 Definitions of CLT
Recently there is not a standard definition of CLT. For the definition of
CLT, its proponents are active to stack the cards in their favor. Richards
and Rodgers pointes out that CLT starts with a theory of language as
communication, and its goal is to develop learner’s communicative
competence (Richards & Rodgers, 2001: 139). And Ellis sees CLT as an
approach that aims to develop procedures for the teaching of the four
language skills that acknowledge the independence of language and
communication (1985: 155). Howatt distinguishes between “strong” and
“weak” version of CLT, he states:
There is, in a sense, a “strong” version of the communicative approach
and a “weak” version. The weak version stresses the importance of providing
learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purposes.
The “strong” version of communicative teaching, on the other hand,
advances the claim that language is acquired through communication. If the
former could be described as “learning to use” English, the later entails
“using English to learn it”. (1984: 277)
From this statement, it can be seen that CLT is a general term to
describe the methodology which teaches language learners how to
communicate efficiently and which, on the whole, pays systematic
attention to language functions as well as language structures.
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2.3 Characteristics of CLT
As for as the characteristics of CLT concerned, there are many different
expressions. According to Larsen and Freeman, they think that there are
three the most obvious characteristics of CLT. They think that almost
everything that is done with a communicative intent, that is, students use
the language a great deal through communicative activities like games,
role-plays and problem-solving tasks and using authentic materials and its
learner-centered and experienced-based view of second language
teaching are required Larsen and Freeman (Larsen &Freeman, 1986: 156).
Besides, Richards and Rodgers pointes out the characteristics as fellows:
a.
Relating the language they teach to the way in which English is used.
b. Activities in which students have the opportunities to determine what
they want to say independently of the teacher.
c.
Exposing students to examples of natural language rather than material
which has been written for language teaching purposes. (Richards and
Rodgers, 2001: 135)
Thus, the author thinks CLT has the following five features: (1) It
stresses the need to allow students opportunities for authentic and creative
use of the language; (2) It focuses on meaning rather than form; (3) It
suggests that learning should be relevant to the needs of students; (4) It
advances task-based language teaching. Students should be given tasks to
perform or problems to solve in the classroom; (5) It emphasizes a
functional approach to language leaning. Also, to be competent in the
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target language, learners should acquire not only linguistic knowledge,
but also the culture of that language.
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ChapterⅢ Methodology
The author adopted Willing’s (1988) questionnaire format with some
modifications, because the Willing’ s questionnaire is more objective and
less intention-loaded, with few preconceptions and no specific predictions
lying behind the choice of individual questions.
As the author’s aim was to collect, in an unprejudiced way, a large
amount of questions about CLT used in the middle school by English
teachers was designed in the believe that the subjects’ answers could
reflect their actual teaching styles. The whole questionnaire has 19
multi-choices. The questions 1 to 4 are to know the background of
subjects; questions 5 to 9 are designed to investigate the subjects’
knowledge of CLT; questions 10 to 19 are related to the use of CLT in
their English class. All the question items are simple questions, phrased
in the second person as concisely and simply as possible so as to avoid
any misunderstanding.
The author chose 5 English teachers from middle school of Lu’an city
to do the pilot study to find out the shortcoming of questionnaire and
further to redesign it according to their feedback.
The participants involved in this questionnaire are 40 English teachers
whom are chosen from middle schools of Lu’an City randomly, ranging
in age from 25 to 50. And the questionnaires edited in Chinese are
delivered to every participant to make them do it at their free time. After
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being finished, the questionnaires are collected back from the participants
as soon as possible so as to avoid being lost.
The author hands out 50 questionnaires and 45 of them are collected
and 40 are valid. In the next chapter, the author will analyze the results.
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ChapterⅣ Results and Analysis
The data collected from this questionnaire (see Table1 and 2) reveals that
in Chinese context, the use of CLT in middle school has some limitations
and feasibilities and we can have many ways to make best use of it, so
that it can be made for English language teaching in China.
From the Table1 below, we can see….
According to Table 2, there are some beneficial factors to use CLT in
English class, but many Chinese specific conditions limit the application
of CLT. 95% of the subjects express that they are familiar with CLT and
96% of the subjects use CLT in English-open class, which indicates that
most of the English teachers have tried to use CLT consciously in English
class. Besides, some good external factors are very useful to the
adaptation of CLT in English class in Chinese context. From Table2, we
can find that 85% of the subjects say that the New English Curriculum
Standard in middle school makes them to use CLT in English class and
some of them join the training about CLT.
Items
Question
YES
NO
95%
13%
88%
74%
46%
5%
87%
12%
26%
54%
Number
Question5
Question6
Question7
Question8
Question9
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Question10
Question11
Question12
Question13
Question14
Question15
Question16
Question17
Question18
Question19
81%
89%
98%
85%
10%
94%
76%
13%
95%
17%
19%
11%
25
25%
90%
6%
24%
87%
5%
83%
Table 2. The results of the questionnaire on the use of CLT in middle school
However, 87% and 88% of the subjects involved in the questionnaire
have express they do not often use CLT but the Chinese traditional
teaching methodology respectively, which demonstrates that….
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ChapterⅤ Discussion
According to the results of the questionnaires, the author finds that the
CLT used in Chinese context has some limitations and feasibilities.
Therefore, the author is to discuss those two aspects respectively and
carefully and then propose some suggestions about how to make best use
of CLT in Chinese context in accordance with the results and analysis of
the questionnaire.
5.1 Limitations on the Use of CLT in Chinese Context
Based on the analysis of the results of the questionnaire, we can find
some specific situations or features of English language teaching in China
to limit the use of CLT.
5.1.1 Teaching Physical Conditions
In CLT, it would be ideal if the number of students in a class is no more
than 16 (Munby, 1988: 34). The students should sit in a circle with chairs
and desks moveable and the classroom comfortable. Some audio-visual
aids like objects, tapes and slides are effective means of arousing the
students’ interest and of creating some social contexts to let them practice
their communicative skills. However, in China, as the questionnaire
showed, 89% of the subjects think that ….
5.1.2 New English Curriculum Standards
In CLT, the syllabus is normally notional and situational (Munby, 1978:
145). It emphasizes on social contexts rather than linguistic forms. It is
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learner-based and the functional features answer the questions of where
and when the learner will need the target language, in which sentence are
always presented in association with actions, time etc. The materials
adopted in the textbooks are mainly based on predictions of the real
situations in which the learner is likely to….
5.1.3 Roles of the Teachers and Students
In CLT, the most important role of a teacher is to act as a facilitator of his
students’ learning, setting up such activities as information gap exercises
for them to work out or by suggesting some tasks for students to
undertake (John, 1989: 263). A teacher may also play ….
5.1.4 Accuracy and Fluency in English Class
Accuracy is a relative term, based on a social judgment of the language
used by a speech community and on the mode of literary sources which
has a strong degree of idealization and inflexibility (Widdowson, 1978:
67). The written forms dominate the spoken ones. For acquiring accuracy,
the learners are often given ….
5.2 Feasibilities on the Use of CLT in Chinese Context
Firstly, with China’s entering WTO and the prospect of 2008 Beijing
Olympics Games, the orientation of foreign language teaching is
practically turning to train the students’ effective performance in actual
communicative context. At the same time, CLT has brought ….
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Besides, from Table 2, 85% of the subjects say that the New English
Curriculum Standards in middle school makes them to use CLT in
English class and 46% of the subjects joined the training about CLT,
which demonstrates that ….
Moreover, 95% of the subjects express that they are familiar with CLT
and 96% of the subjects use CLT in English-open class, which indicates
that English teachers in China are getting to knowing more about the CLT
and most of them have accepted it as a teaching methodology. Therefore,
now, more and more English teachers are ….
5.3 Suggestions on the Use of CLT in English Class in Chinese
Context
According to the data of Table2, 46% and 74% of the subjects express
that their own English proficiency and class organization ability
respectively limit their use of CLT in English class. Thus the author is to
discuss how to best use of CLT in English class from those teachers’
deficiency.
Firstly, the teachers should improve their own English proficiency.
Chinese has a proverb, which says that if you want to give students a cup
of water, you must have a barrel of water. That means, to be a good
teacher, he or she should be ….
Secondly, the English teachers should have high abilities to organize
their classroom activities. 74% of the subjects express that their own
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class organization ability limit their use of CLT in English class. In the
second language classroom, teacher’s techniques to organize the
classroom activities directly contributing to the students’ intrinsic
motivation which can help teachers manage and organize the classroom
activities better….
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ChapterⅥ Conclusion
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), borne in the western
countries in the late 1960s, is an approach that considers the functional
and social factors in language use. It is….
Based on the survey of CLT used in middle school in Chinese
context, the author has a basic knowledge of the application of CLT in
China and concludes the following two points. One is that the Chinese
specific conditions or features like Chinese teaching physical conditions,
educational system and the roles of teachers and students limit the use
of CLT. The other is that in Chinese context, there is some feasibility
for CLT to use and the author gives some arguments to support it.
Besides, the author also discusses how to make best use of CLT in
Chinese context from the teachers’ aspects.
As the author has already discussed in the paper, CLT still could
work in Chinese context. There are, however, many issues unsolved.
The first problem, one of no small importance, is the training of
competent teachers at a large scale, for the communicative approach
sets very high demands on teachers. In short, what CLT requires in
order to be effective are ….
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