The Application Of The Situational Teaching Method In English Classroom Teaching At Vocational Colleges

With the trend towards globalization and information networking, English play a very important role in people's daily lives. Society puts forward new requirement in English teaching. As a matter of fact, most of vocational colleges still apply the traditional teaching method in English teaching. The traditional teaching method neglects to cultivate students'interest and practical ability as well as neglect students are the principal part. Based on the above problems, the author analyzes the students'English level and the state of the English teaching at vocational colleges. She finds the situational teaching method is the good choice to solve the problems.In the paper, from pedagogy, psychology, linguistics points of views, under the guidance of Constructivist Learning Theory, Krashen's Input Theory and Situational Cognitive Theory, the English teaching is input effectively with the situational teaching method. In order to get a clear picture of the application of the situational teaching method in English classroom teaching at vocational colleges, the author first conducted a survey by a questionnaire researching the students'interest of learning English in the Zibo Vocational Institute, and by testing their English level at Zibo Vocational Institute, where the author works. Based on the data collected, the author chose two classes at Zibo Vocational Institute, one being the experimental class (P09 Pre-school Education Class 3) and the other the control class (P09 Computer Class 1) and carried out situational teaching experiments. Analyzing with SPSS, the author found that the experimental class taught in situational teaching mainly improved a lot. The average score of the experimental class in the test had a little raise. So did the average score of the following parts in the test, Listening (increase 1.6 points), Reading Comprehension (increase 1.5 points) and Writing (increase 1.6 points). While the English score of the control class taught in traditional teaching pattern was lower compared to its pre-test. Furthermore, the data analysis of the questionnaire shows that the students of the experimental class have more interest and encouragement in learning English after the experiment. It indicates that situational teaching method plays an active role in promoting vocational colleges students'interest in learning English and consequently improving students'English language acquisition.Despite limitations the author does hope tis study could be of some value for the future research on situational teaching method and of some help in improving English classroom teaching, especially in situational teaching method in English classroom teaching at vocational colleges.