Applying Communicative Approach In Teaching College Spoken English

In teaching college English in our country, there is a common phenomenon of"Dumb English". In 2004, College English Curriculum Requirements (For Trial Implementation) was drawn up by the Higher Education Department of Education Ministry. It proposed that"The objective of College English is to develop students'ability to use English in an all-around way, especially in listening and speaking". The teaching goal paid more attention to listening and speaking abilities than ever before and has made teaching college spoken English one of the essential subjects in the present research of teaching English. The Communicative Approach regards developing learners'communicative competence as its final goal. Therefore, it is an effective measure to solve the current problems to change the traditional teaching model with CA and to train students'oral English skill through communication activities.The paper mainly discusses the practical strategies and methods of CA in teaching college spoken English and their effectiveness. It falls into six chapters.Chapter One is a brief introduction to the current situation of teaching spoken English for Chinese non-English major college students, the necessity to lay emphasis on teaching college spoken English and the goal of the research paper. Chapter Two is literature review, which summarizes the background, the concept and the principles of CA. Moreover, related CA principles in teaching spoken English are presented, i.e. feedback and information gap. Then the nature of oral communication and the principles for teaching oral English are illustrated. Based on the related theories in Chapter Two, Chapter Three proposes some practical strategies and methods of applying CA in teaching oral English. Various patterns of effective oral communication activities are listed. During these activities, the teacher and his students are undergoing a shift correspondingly in their roles. Chapter Four is the empirical study. Through the comparative investigation into two parallel classes, data are collected and analyzed, and finally conclusion is made. Chapter Five presents implications and suggestions for teaching college spoken English based on the findings of the empirical study. Chapter Six is the concluding part for the whole paper, which generalizes the focus of the research and states that there may be limitations to the study and further research is needed.