| With the rapid development of the informatization of social life and the globalization of economic activity, a certain foreign language, especially English, has become an important tool for China’s opening reform and international communication. As an important tool, English plays a significant strategic role in the process of China’s overall globalization in politics, economy and culture. Moreover, English competence becomes the core of talents competition. Despite the enormous input in English teaching by Chinese government and schools, the efficiency of English teaching is far from satisfactory. Consequently, the aims on learners’ development in English course wouldn’t be achieved as expected. In order to improve the effectiveness of teaching English, multiple reforms have been implemented, including increasing the amount of practice time for language skills, adopting new methods and so on. However, the outcome of these reforms didn’t reach the expectations. Naturally, the doubt of “English course should be canceled or not since English teaching is lowly efficient?” once became the most concerned issue. In fact, under the circumstance of globalization, it is definitely wise to reinforce the construction of English course and improve its teaching efficiency rather than doubting its effectiveness and canceling the course.On the basis of the researcher’s working experience and reflection about the problems in English teaching, it is discovered that the phenomenon learning English mechanically and meaninglessly is very obvious among English learners. In other words, English learners are prone to learn by rote and repeated drills. Compared with scientific and engineering disciplines, English course for non-English majors itself is not systematic and structured. The unsystematic and irrelevant teaching process of knowledge and skills might result in the lower efficiency.The new reform of English course syllabus was conducted in Chongqing University in 2013. Unlike the previous reform, the new round reform attached great importance to the role of thinking in English teaching and learning. Factually, language and thinking are closely related, especially the abstract and logic thinking. Inspired by the school-based reform and the current obvious ignorance of thinking’ role in English teaching and learning, the researcher attempts to construct a new mode for English teaching which aims at getting learner’s logic thinking involved while learning English through restructuring the process and elements of teaching and learning, ultimately at improving the efficiency of English teaching and promoting the learners’ all-round development.Therefore, this study focuses on the following three parts: theoretic foundation for constructing a structural teaching mode for teaching English, the detailed description of the mode’s elements and process and its application in real teaching practice. According to different content and purpose of each part, different research methods are employed. In the part of theoretic foundation, the method of literature analyzing is the main one; in the part of applying the mode in teaching practice, the methods of conducting surveys and experiments are employed to test the mode’s effectiveness.This study is implemented according to the following procedure: raise a question—analysize the nature of foreign language teaching—reflect the problems in English teaching—seek theoretic rationale for constructing a new teaching mode—construct the mode—verify the practical effectiveness—modify the mode”. Applying the general theories about knowledge and skill to English knowledge and skills, the nature of English teaching has been revealed. In addition, the relationship of knowledge, skills and thinking is thoroughly analyzed which may help the English teachers to find the real problems and solutions.Firstly, according to the core concepts and relevant key points,closely related literature about structuralism, structured instruction and TTVS(Teaching Technology of Viewpoint-Structure) teaching mode is thoroughly reviewed and commented. Literature review lays a foundation for testifying the feasibility of constructing a structuralized teaching mode in English teaching. English teaching is featured by a particular object—language. Considering this factor, the previous studies on the relationship between thinking and language, on the thinking-related hot issues including critical thinking, the thinking pattern and so on are also reviewed and commented.Developing language skills is recognized as the first objective of English teaching. Achieving this objective or not has a vital effect on the effectiveness of Language teaching. What is language skill? What are the distinctive characteristics? Therefore, after the literature review, based on the relevant theories in Educational Psychology, it is found that the nature of language skill is intellectual property not behavioral property. Language knowledge and thinking in the target language are the essential supporting factors for developing skills. Unfortunately, they are usually ignored in English teaching practice, which probably leads to the low efficiency of skill development.Language knowledge is mainly composed of vocabulary and grammatical structures which constitute the content of language teaching. Based on the theories of Educational Psychology and Linguistics, language knowledge differs from the knowledge in other disciplines: vocabulary and grammatical structures are presented in the form of language itself, at a deeper lever, the vocabulary and grammatical structures in a certain language embody the cognitive conceptualization. When reflecting the problems in English teaching, especially in knowledge teaching, we could discover that the way of teaching knowledge is against the close relationship between language and thinking: knowledge is taught alone, separated from thinking.As a matter of fact, English teaching syllabuses have been taking the developing intellectual faculties and cultivating thinking skills as the objectives. In addition, in recent years, some thinking-related issues become hot concern, such as the thinking pattern in English, thinking in English and critical thinking. After reviewing the previous studies and further analysis, it is found that these thinking-related hot issues share a same type of thinking: logic thinking. Concept is the basic unit of logic thinking and logic is the basic rule of organizing various concepts. Language structure reflects the deeper logic conceptual structure. Therefore, it is important to adopt structuralism as a useful methodology to see the conceptual structure hidden in language structure.The above studies lay a theoretic foundation for constructing a new mode for English teaching, and the current problems in English teaching suggest the realistic needs for a new method.After combining the theories in Education, Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Psychology and Cognitive Linguistics, based on the Structured Instruction and TTVS mode, a new English teaching mode is constructed: Thinking--involved Conceptualized and Structuralized Instruction Mode(TCSIM). The major elements and procedure of the new mode are illuminated in the following chapter. This mode is distinguished from other modes by its emphasis on the involvement of logic thinking in language teaching and learning, the process of conceptualizing experience, the process of presenting concepts with language and the integration of knowledge structure, cognition scheme and thinking pattern.In order to testify the effectiveness of the newly constructed mode, the mode is applied in real English teaching experiment. The original aim of constructing a new mode is to improve the effectiveness of English instruction, especially to promote the learner’s development in language skills which include speaking, listening, reading and writing. The effectiveness is evaluated in terms of the development of writing in English. As for the assessment criteria of writing, the study takes accuracy, coherence and flexibility as the key criteria after making a thorough analysis on the different assessment criteria of influential teaching syllabuses and tests home and abroad. The assessment criteria in teaching experiment share common cores: concept and thinking.The experiment is conducted for 52 non-English majors who are divided into a experimental group of 28 students and a controlled group of 24 students. The former group is taught the grammatical knowledge “tense and aspect” in TCSIM,and the latter group is taught in an usual conventional method. With a pre-test and a post-test as data collection instruments, the quantitative analysis indicated that the TCSIM significantly improve learners’ performance in writing test in terms of the assessment criteria. According to the learners’ performance in writing test, the effect of TCSIM was positive, it helps the learners to internalize the knowledge to construct their own cognitive schema with logic thinking engaged in the whole learning process, and it facilitates the transferring from knowledge from skill.To explore the relationship structure of language structure, cognitive scheme and thinking pattern further in the previous teaching approaches and methods, the different roles of thinking in teaching approaches and methods are discussed and illuminated. Several influential approaches have been reviewed and analyzed from the two levels of theoretic principles and practical instructions which focus on language theory,learning theory, teaching content and classroom activity. By comparison and contrast, it is found that thinking plays a specific and different role in these approaches. Image thinking does function in English teaching and influence teaching effectiveness; however, logic thinking plays a more significant role for language teaching and learning because language is an abstract signal which has an inner connection with logic thinking and concept, especially with English, a language deeply rooted in logic and reasoning since Aristotle era.Theoretically and practically, the objectives of language skill, knowledge and thinking in English teaching are closely related rather than separated. It might not be rational to overemphasize the goals of language skill regardless of the supporting role of structured knowledge. Without structured knowledge and skill practice, it would be an empty objective to develop critical thinking skills. In English teaching, the features of English and the values of knowledge structure should be paid enough attention. With these principles, cognitive scheme could be constructed, language skills developed and thinking skill cultivated. |
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