A Study On The Shift Of College English Teachers' Role In Multimedia Network Environment

With the deep development of globalization, international communication and cooperation are becoming more and more frequent, which brings an unprecedented impact on traditional language teaching mode "teacher-centeredness". Since the 1990s, information technology (IT) has developed rapidly in our country, multimedia and network have been applied widely and deeply in education, which provides a great deal of resources for foreign language instruction, and simultaneously offers a new teaching mode. In multimedia network environment college English teachers need to shift their roles, to adopt actively the new teaching mode, to embody the learners'subject position in teaching process and to exert the teachers'leading role, making learning develop towards individualization and autonomy.Although there are many domestic studies on college English teachers'role in multimedia network environment in recent years, few of them are empirical studies and most still belong to theoretical studies. The thesis takes behaviorism, constructivism, communicative language teaching and Feuerstein's theory of mediation as its theoretical basis to make an empirical study. It compares the college English teachers'role in traditional classroom with that in multimedia network environment to find the changes of teachers'role and their influence on English language teaching and learning in some aspects, aims to explore the actual shift of teachers'role and some existing related problems, providing suggestions and references for fulfillment and development of teachers'role in multimedia network environment, and promoting college English teaching reform to develop further.The study adopts quantitative and qualitative research instruments, combines questionnaire with interview. The subjects for questionnaire were 85 students from Changchun Institute of Technology, among them 43 students were from traditional English classroom, and the other 42 students were from multimedia network English learning environment. After completing questionnaire, interviews were carried out respectively within ten students and ten teachers, and all the interview contents were recorded. The data got from the questionnaires were coded and input with the Microsoft Excel, then the SPSS 15.0 was applied to analyze the data. There are five steps in data analysis:reliability statistics, descriptive statistics, explorative statistics, one-sample K-S test and independent samples t-test.Through careful analysis of the data, it is found that college English teachers'role in multimedia network environment has changed greatly compared with that in traditional classroom. The shift has partly been finished, and teaching and learning has been improved in some aspects, part of teachers and students have updated their concepts, they agree upon the new teaching mode. However, there are also some points that call for attentions to be further improved, such as some teachers'primary role is still instructor, teachers'actual performances still deviate from students'expectations for teachers somewhat, network has not been efficiently utilized yet, some of computer-based facilities often do not work normally, etc. Otherwise, they will go on influencing the shift of teachers'role. It is put forward in the thesis that multimedia and network have provided more convenient conditions for autonomous learning, so teachers ought to strengthen two roles, trainer and supervisor, in teaching and learning in multimedia network environment, reinforce learners'learning strategy training, make them have a clear view of learning tasks in order to avoid indulging in net and being influenced by unhealthy information. Teacher development should be paid more attentions. It is necessary for teachers to update their teaching concepts, improve teaching skills and computer-operating ability to meet the requirements of new teaching situation. Learners should be guided to change their old learning notions, learn how to learn autonomously and use self-assessment so as to improve English proficiency level. Daily maintenance of computers and other related facilities needs to be strengthened, and the investments in teaching facilities call for an enhancement. Syllabus and class time need reasonable adjustments to improve English instruction in multimedia network environment.This study also attempts to explore the relationships between network and the three teaching elements (teacher, student, textbook). Based on this, a new framework is established highlighting the function of network in teaching process as a medium and resource. If network in the framework were deleted, the traditional teaching mode would be left. So online teaching and learning is good supplement and expansion to traditional classroom. According to specific teaching contents and objectives, teachers can choose either of them or combine both of them to accomplish teaching tasks.Besides, the thesis points out the limitations of the study, and also gives some suggestions for future researches at the end.