On The Effectiveness Of College English Teaching

College English(CE) teaching, as a result of the times, has witnessed China's political, economical and education development. To improve the effectiveness of CE teaching is a request of historical missions, a requirement of the reality and even an urgent problem to be tackled at this moment. CE Teaching was born to cultivate professional talents good at English who are still badly needed today. If English was needed for talents to import advanced technology and ideas from western countries, now it's needed for better communication between China and the world, for China's more contribution to the world. To be sure, CE cannot work alone to fulfill the mission, but it has never ceased its efforts. Now CE teaching is facing some new problems— fewer teaching hours, unbalanced skills of students, demotivated students— and it has no choice but to improve students English proficiency within limited teaching time. But what can be done to improve the effectiveness of teaching and make teaching more interesting to students? This dissertation is trying to find answers and methods to promote the effectiveness of CE Teaching. The current research is based on studies on effective teaching home and abroad and followed with an investigation of the effectiveness of CE teaching in a university and main factors concerned. Knowing the status quote of CE teaching is only one step to the final objective— to improve the teaching quality. Hence, the research continues to probe and analyze some key factors related to CE teaching and on that basis a practical framework of effective CE teaching is formed. Finally, a proof test is conducted to verify whether the framework is applicable,practical and comprehensive, with the hope to help teachers diagnose teaching problems, monitor and improve the effectiveness of their teaching. In addition to the introduction, the dissertation consists of four chapters as follows:Chapter one is mainly about studies of effective teaching, which works as the theoretical foundation of the whole thesis. The studies of effective teaching are abundant and this thesis focuses on the origin, implications, influential factors and evaluation of effective teaching. In this thesis, effective teaching refers to any teaching that can produce good results with high efficiency. This understanding is applied to any discipline, while for effective English teaching good results can be defined as valuable, comprehensive and of high level; besides, the results should be immediate and sustainable at the same time. Efficiency refers to the ratio of time and energy to output. In brief, the effective CE teaching means to improve students English proficiency within limited time, and the proficiency must be sustainable for students'future.Chapter two is the exploration of teaching effectiveness of CE with a questionnaire. Twenty-four teachers and their 1800 students in HB University voluntarily participated in the study in December, 2013. Statistical analyses demonstrated that students had a very positive attitude to College English teaching and their teachers, with teachers being rated higher than the course, but had far less confidence in learning outcomes or values. Among the learning outcomes, students'confidence in English, their comprehensive English proficiency and interest ranked the lowest three. The survey result can be interpreted as students thought highly of this course and teachers'performance but were not so satisfied with their own gain. Further analyses revealed that there are twelve factors from six dimensions to influence students gain such as class interaction, teaching organization, teachers' enthusiasm, etc..Chapter 3 starts with a detailed analysis of key factors involved in CE teaching and ends with a framework for effective CE teaching. Key factors include teaching objectives, teaching resources, teaching environment and the design of teaching process. According to this thesis, the teaching objective of CE should be using English effectively, and to achieve that, teachers can integrate English learning with and into liberal arts education, which can combine effectively the two functions English education should serve and thus guarantee the valuable, comprehensive and sustainable influence of CE teaching on students. IT has greatly enriched College English teaching resources and changed learning environment. In terms of teaching resources, traditional teaching resources coexist with the latest digital information resources, together with interpersonal interaction resources indispensable to English teaching, and all of them are conveniently available to CE teaching. And to choose and use wisely is the only way to prove the value of the resources. For teaching environment, IT has improved traditional teaching conditions and created new online learning environment, while teachers and students are still the users and creators of the environment, and the learning community of teachers, students and environment is a name for the best learning environment and also one of the visions of the 21st century. The three factors mentioned above provide direction, content and conditions for effective teaching, and are integrated into students'learning-centered process of teaching, together with specific teaching activities, that is how effective teaching works. Based on the above-mentioned analysis, this thesis tries to establish a practical framework for effective teaching with the hope of guiding teachers. The framework is composed of four dimensions and twenty-four items with detailed descriptions which include teacher's behavior and expected student's performance.Chapter 4 tries to verify the applicability of the framework. Some teachers were invited to observe 4 teaching videos and record their observation according to an observation table which is adapted from the framework. Analyses of observation records and comparison with comments made by some judges and students show that the framework is of great applicability and comprehensiveness, and can help to diagnose teaching problems and lead to teaching reflection. What's more, the verification test has detected some typical practice in CE teaching, which may be not so conducive to students' English proficiency, for example, teachers attach more importance to teaching objectives than evaluation of their teaching; the learning of language forms is missing in CE, etc.... And those should be improved for the effectiveness of CE teaching. Honestly, the framework itself and its proof test cannot be perfect for the choice of videos and the small poll of participants, etc.. Therefore, if possible, the framework will be further verified in normal classroom teaching with more teachers as observers.We have been and will be on the way to the effectiveness of CE teaching. The current research originated from CE teaching, is based on theories and quantitative research, and its results go back to the practice, which can contribute to the studies on effective teaching and instructional practice.