如何由教师为中心转化为以学生为中心的英语课堂教学

如何由教师为中心转化为以学生为如何由教师为中心转化为以学生为中心的英语课堂教学中心的英语课堂教学How to Shift from a Teacher-Centered to a Learner-Centered English ClassroomContentsAbstract .1Key words .1I. Introduction.1II. Background Information.2III. The Comparison between the Traditional Approach and the Learner-Centered Approach .33.1 The Traditional Approach of Teaching.33.2 Learner-Centered Approach.53.2.1The Definition of Learner- Centered Approach.53.2.2 The Key Feature of Learner-Centered Approach.53.2.3 The Advantages of a Learner-Centered Classroom.63.2.4 The Significance of Learner-Centered Approach in China.6IV. Causes for the Adoption of the Learner-Centered Approach in China.64.1 Considering the Teaching Method .74.1.1 Giving the Poor of Instructions .74.1.2 Failure to Monitor, or to Monitor Sensitively 84.1.3 Failure to Give Feedback .84.2 Considering Teachers Qualification .8V. Advice on How to Shift from a Teacher-Centered to a Learner- Centered English Classroom .85.1 Using the Communicative Approach.85.2 Creating Comfortable Classroom Atmosphere.115.3 Using Group Work .115.4 Producing More Qualified Teachers.13VI. Conclusion .13References.14摘摘要要：语言教学的目的是使学生能使用目标语言进行交流。学生是学习的主体， 所以外语课堂教学应尽可能以学生为中心。随着语言教学不断交际化方面发展，传统的教学模式受到挑战， 文章主张英语教学要以学生为中心， 并讨论了为何要以学生为中心， 提出了如何以学生为中心的几点建议。关键词：关键词：英语教学； 以学生为中心； 交际法Abstracts: The purposes of language teaching are to enable students to communicate in the target language. Only the learner can learn. Therefore English classes should be made as learner-centered as possible and the learner-centered approach is advocated nowadays. With the teaching of language being more and more communication-oriented, the traditional classroom teaching is facing a big challenge. This paper proposes a new teaching idea of the “learner-centered” and analyses its reasons, and also puts forward several methods as to attaining this teaching idea.Key words: English teaching; learner-centered; communicative approachI. IntroductionToday, along with the increasingly economic and scientific development, English is becoming more and more important in our study and life. Unfortunately the purpose of teaching and learning English has not been realized. Many people still take it for granted that they learn English just because it is part of the school curriculum. Their only aim is to get high marks in the final entrance examination but mot communication.At present, the key to deepening the educational reform lies in whether the traditional teaching method, which dominates teaching practice in the language classroom method can be broken.In traditional teacher-centered English classroom, teachers are to impart language knowledge while students are always on the receiving stage, so its hard for the students to give full play to their initiative. The teacher should provide students with a lot of simple, useful, interesting language materials about daily life. The students can learn it in the English mother tongue atmosphere easily. Just as a language education professor said: “Tell me, Ill forget, show me maybe Ill remember, involve me, Ill understand.” So, let the students take part in the activities, and then they can understand what they are learning. In English teaching & learning as a mother tongue, the teachers break the traditional “teacher-centered” mode, to take its place is the “learner-centered” mode, which based on the students, is more flexible and the students are the masters of English learning. In English teaching & learning as a mother tongue environment cooperative learning can help students shorten the distance from learner-centered learning to solidifying the new knowledge and shorten gap between the individual learning abilities.II. Background InformationWith the current liberal policy of opening to the outside world, English Language Teaching (ELT) is increasingly popular in China. Furthermore, with the recent success of Chinas accession to the World Trade Organization and winning for hosting the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, there is an obvious consensus among the nation that English is a necessity for almost any modern Chinese. Despite the apparent achievements of Chinas ELT profession for the last couple of decades, there are still unsatisfactory aspects in teaching the English language at the tertiary level; some government officials have made their complaints about these in public. This makes it more urgent that current teaching methodology should be changed or at least modified with respect to the necessary reform in the teaching of English in China, particularly at the tertiary level.If we need something new and better to replace the old way of teaching English, there seems to be one promising candidate for teachers to select, i.e. the learner-centered approach in foreign language instruction. With the introduction of relevant theory and related rationale in Chinas applied linguistic community, some teachers have showed considerable interest in this new teaching method. There are some who have gone even so far as regarding the approach as a magic panacea.Traditionally, the teaching of EFL in most East Asian countries is dominated by a teacher-centered, book-centered, grammar-translation method and an emphasis on rote memory (Liu & Littlewood, 1997). These traditional language-teaching approaches have resulted in a number of typical learning styles in East Asian countries, with introverted learning being one of them. In East Asia, most students see knowledge as something to be transmitted by the teacher rather than discovered by the learners. They, therefore, find it normal to engage in modes of learning which are teacher-centered and in which they receive knowledge rather than interpret it. According to Harshbarger el al (1986), Japanese and Korean students are often quiet, shy and reticent in language classrooms. They dislike public touch and overt displays of opinions or emotions, indicating a reserve that is the hallmark of introverts. Chinese students likewise name listening to teacher as their most frequent activity in senior school English classes (Liu & Littlewood, 1997). All these claims are confirmed by a study conducted by Sato (1982), in which she compared the participation of Asian students in the classroom interaction with that of non-Asian students. Sato found that the Asians took significant fewer speaking turns than did their non-Asian classmates (36.5% as opposed to 63.5%). The teacher-centered classroom teaching in East Asia also leads to a closure-oriented style for most East Asian students. These closure-oriented students dislike ambiguity, uncertainty or fuzziness. To avoid these, they will sometimes jump to hasty conclusions about grammar rules or reading themes.III. The Comparison between the Traditional Approach and the Learner-Centered Approach3.1 The traditional Approach of TeachingThe traditional approach of teaching in our English classroom is usually called the Grammar-Translation Approach. The traditional language classroom is dominated by the teacher from the very beginning to the end. In the other words the process of teaching and learning is teacher-centered. Teachers perform two roles: “The first is that of knower-the teacher is source of knowledge in terms of both the target language and the choice of methodology. The second role is that of activities organizer-the teacher sets up and steers learning activities and provides authoritative feedback on students performance.” (Lan Tudor, 1993) In this sense, the students needs are neglected and teaching becomes blind. What the students can do in traditional mode of teaching is to perform under the teachers wishes, and learning becomes passive and mechanical. The teacher remains center of classroom. Students in China are generally teacher-dependent and lack the initiative to implement learning on their own. To many of them, it is impossible for one to adapt to the changing society with the knowledge learned at school. The traditional teacher-centered paradigm may prevent effective technology integration. Most teachers were taught under the Kairov pedagogy, and this model has dominated Chinese education for approximately fifty years. Students, those who do generally just look up new words in the text and learn them by heart. They feel this is all they need do because they expect their teachers to spoon-feed them in class. Students do not need to actively think over what they will learn or why they should learn or how. They just come to class with their ears open to listen to the teacher and receive knowledge. The methods of the teaching English can be briefly described as follows: before going to class, students are usually required to prepare the new lesson, that is, to look for the meaning of the new vocabulary in the word list or in a dictionary and analysis sentences grammatically. In class, a teacher generally has two focuses: one is word study, which is often performed with the teacher taking out some difficult words or phrases from a text and explaining the meaning and the usage by giving examples. Another focus is study of grammar, which is usually done by the teacher explaining or analysis some important or difficult structures either in English or in Chinese. The students must do more reading the text aloud paragraph by paragraph, asking comprehension question, and finally doing the exercises after the text. Students are also required to do the exercises beforehand. So what the teacher needs to do with the exercises is only to check the answers by asking students to read their answers and asking other students to confirm or reject. If the students can not do so, the teacher does it instead. Both teachers and students spend a lot time on it; for it takes up a high percentage of examination, the teachers teach many new words, grammar structure. Most of students are teacher-dependent. They dont know how to study themselves. They are not interested in English. In such class, the teacher provides all the input like a transmitter, and the students passively receive what is sent to them. How to improve the students interest and how teachers can change the method in order to help the students step from a passive position of learning and memorizing are becoming the most important problem for teachers. For the problems, there are some possible solutions, which can improve the students interest of learning English; the teachers use the right method to improve the English teaching quality. That is the times requirement. The goal of current education tends more and more to improve ones ability and strengthen ones overall quality. It is impossible for one to adapt to the changing society with the knowledge learned at school. The future society is continually learning one that requires people to learn throughout his life. English has become the most popular foreign language in China. So teacher-dependent teaching should be changed in order for English learners to be more effective and successful.3.2 Learner-Centered ApproachIn order to understand the approach better, lets first focus on the curriculum design, since the learner-centered approach is characterized by the involvement of the learner in all aspects of the curriculum process. In learner-centered approach, curriculum design can be seen as a negotiating process between teachers and students, this differs from traditional approaches to curriculum design where these decisions are made by “outside” experts such as needs analyst or course planners. (Nunan, 1989) He expresses this in the following terms: “While a learner-centered curriculum will contain similar elements and processes to traditional curricula, a key difference will be that information by and from learners will be built into every phase of the curriculum process. Curriculum development becomes a collaborative effort between teachers and learners, since learner will be involved in decisions on content selection, methodology and evaluation.” Nunan still expresses his idea about the design of curriculum in other words: “The more teachers and students who are involved in developing the curriculum, the more successful it is likely to be.” This idea emphasizes the strongest and most coherent view of what a learner-centered approach can mean in language teaching terms. In a learner-centered approach students are seen as being able to assume a more active and participatory role than is usual in traditional approaches. As the goal of language teaching and learning is for communication, the learner-centered approach boils down to responding to students in built needs as both language learner and users. This is why it becomes more and more acceptable in the field of language teaching. For the first time, the function of language has been emphasized, as the approach aims at enabling students to communicate in the target language and to improve their real language ability. Learner-centered approach is one of the most efficient ways in language teaching and learning field, especially in Chinas language teaching circle, where it has been dominated by the traditional approaches for many years. 3.2.1 The Definition of Learner-Centered ApproachThe learner-centered teaching approach aimed at developing students communicative ability more effectively is gaining great popularity in English teaching class. It emphasizes students involvement and active participation in class as well as the important part teachers plays in guiding students and providing the “conditions”. Learners will be involved in decisions on content selection methodology and evaluation. 3.2.2 The Key Feature of Learner-Centered ApproachA key feature of student-centered teaching is enabling students to reflect on what and how they have learned. Motivation is intrinsic to them arising from their specific interests and background knowledge. They choose topics for study and the learning methods to be used. They are experts, knowing their own level of interest and background knowledge. The students enthusiasm of learning is to be aroused by this teaching method. 3.2.3 The Advantages of a Learner-Centered Classroom (1) Students can improve their learning process.(2) Students are more active in their learning process.(3) Students are expected to turn their input into output.(4) The teacher has the opportunity to give timely and meaningful feedback and advice.(5) Classes are more flexible and interesting.(6) Students become more able language users as they make use of the language learning process in the classroom activities3.2.4 The Significance of Learner-Centered Approach in ChinaIn recent years, the scholars in China have made some attempts to teach English as a tool of communication by using the new textbook in secondary school. Yet, they havent found a suitable approach to language teaching. Learner-centered approach is just the one that suits them best.Generally speaking, the Chinese students are more conservative than the western students. This is largely due to the Chinese teachers strict restriction to students creativity and imagination. On the contrary, the learner-centered approach takes the students needs at every step of teaching and encourages them to learn how to learn. More opportunities are provided for them to behave naturally, which is vital to the development of their creativity and imagination; In addition, this approach is very helpful to those shy students.IV. Causes for the Adoption of the Learner-Centered Approach in ChinaSince language teaching and learning is based on language, it seems important to define the term first. Francis, a linguist, defines language as “an arbitrary system of articulated sounds made use of by a group of humans as a means of carrying on the affairs of their society.” The definition contains a number of important principles. One of them is that the purposes of learning a language are for communication, because a language is useful only if it allows one person to communicate with one another. This may mean speaking to someone who listens, or writing for someone who reads.The understanding of language itself is very helpful in learning it. Traditional approaches failed to understand the implication of the language. That is to say, language is used for communication. English teaching and learning in China is facing the problem.4.1 Considering the Teaching MethodIn the traditional language classrooms the teachers speech occupies most of the class time. What learners have to do is listening to the teacher and taking notes. They are in a rather passive position. The traditional English language teaching method, or, the grammar-translation method, refers to the translation and explanation of foreign material in ones own mother tongue. Comparison of the major distinctive features between the traditional method and the communicative approach, as was provided by famous linguists Finocchiaro and Brumfit, will show the advantages of the latter over the formerTraditional language teaching attends of structure and form more than meaning; language learning is learning structures, sounds and words; teachers are the center of teaching activities and the source of knowledge. While in communicative approach meaning is primary; language learning is learning how to communicate; students are the center of the teaching process. Teachers help them in any way that motivates them to work with the language.Through the above detailed comparison we can see that the new approach has many advantages over the traditional method. In fact most teachers of English have already given up the traditional teaching method. They have recognized that the objective of language learning is the ability to communicate with speakers of the target language in real situations, and that the goal of language teaching is to train learners communicative competence rather than grammatical accuracy or pronunciation accuracy. The communicative approach to foreign language teaching has been widely applied to achieve this teaching goal. But there are still some problems we have met in applying this approach, such as, the students being passive, keeping silent and not listening to each other, but these are not the real reasons for the failure of the new teaching approach. From observation of most teachers classroom, it seems that they are not applying communicative ideas in an appropriate way. In particular, they neglect seemingly unimportant but actually very crucial steps in carrying out their new teaching plan. There are some problems in the learner-centered English classroom. 4.1.1 Giving the Poor of InstructionsWhen the teacher wants students to do something, he/she only gives an instruction once and refuses to repeat it. There are always students who do not understand the teacher and therefore do not know what to do or how to do it and so cannot participate in the activity. Instead, they just sit there doing something else or chatting with each other in their native language. 4.1.2 Failure to Monitor, or to Monitor SensitivelyWhen students are doing pair/group work, the teacher stands on the teachers platform facing all the students, physically dominating the class, but fail to take any interest in what they are doing sometimes he/she even reads his/her own materials on the platform and plays no attention to the students. Other teachers do watch and listen to their students, but wear such serious facial expressions that when they come near a student who is talking, the student will immediately stop.4.1.3 Failure to Give FeedbackAt the end of each activity, students usually expect some kind of comment from their teacher on what they have talked about or what have done, but the teacher fails to comment, instead, the teacher might say, Now, stop talking. Lets go on the next stage, Ok, time is up, or something like that, and then give the student other tasks to do.4.2 Considering Teachers QualificationTeachers qualification regarding information literacy is inadequate. Teachers do not have