English Listening, Speaking, Reading And Writing Cycle Teaching Method

The study of "National High School English Teaching Investigation" (1998-2000), which was made throughout the 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the whole country, proved that the English teaching of high school in our country had made great achievements in raising the quality by a large scale for the past years. But foreign language teaching achievement had lagged far behind our country's fast economic development and open policy. Its reasons lay in many aspects, especially ' because the teaching methods of foreign language were and are still very outmoded, still relatively backward. Our foreign language teaching is still more passive than active, more reluctant than willing, more inculcating than inspiring. These methods are unfavorable to the cultivation of students' interest, unfavorable to the arousal of their study enthusiasm, unfavorable to their self-development and unfavorable to the development of their personal consciousness. To grasp a foreign language, students must have the ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing. English teachers must train and raise students' integrating quality in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Listening, speaking, reading and writing are not only the purpose of English teaching and learning, but also the essential means of English teaching and learning.But for many years, the English teaching of high school in our country has mainly been adopting foreign English teaching methods. These teaching methods are said either to ignore listening and speaking to put emphasis on reading and writing, or to ignore reading and writing to put emphasis on listening and speaking, failing to balance the relationship of the four basic skills. On the other hand, the college entrance examination had long been only a written one, which forces the English teaching of high school to focus on improving students' written examination ability, while ignoring the training or even giving up listening and speaking ability. As a result, time for teaching of English of high school is mostly spent in improving the ability of taking an entrance examination in reading-and writing, while at the same time, time for listening and speaking is squeezed out (since college entrance examination began to examine listening throughout the country in 2003, listening has been trained and strengthened to some extent, but still not enough). This is unfavorable to the overall cultivation and improvement of students' English quality and ability. In English teaching, we must follow the rules of the language learning and deal correctly with the relationship between listening, speaking, reading and writing. So we should seek a method that accords with our real English teaching situation and can bring better effects.Under this background, we proposed the circulation teaching method of English listening, speaking, reading and writing. It means in the course of daily teaching, the way teachers and students carry on through the teaching activities is supposed to help turn students' knowledge of English into ability and skill by using circulation of listening, speaking, reading and writing in each class. It is a kind of teaching method of English that can rapidly make students capable of using English actually in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Characteristic of the method is as follows: Every class includes listening, speaking, reading and writing-circulation of four basic skills around one subject. The circulation helps make the language materials get many times of spiral-rising repetition at different levels and in various forms, which pays attention to training students' English overall qualities and contributes to students' long-term development.After six years of experiment and study of the circulation teaching method of English listening, speaking, reading and writing, we have improved students' English overall qualities, and established the theoretical system and classroom instruction mode of the circulation teaching method of the English listening, speaking, reading and writing, a...