An Empirical Study Of Incentive Teaching Approach In Interactive College English Teaching

Because of the more practical objectives of adult students in English learning, thesignificance of English as a tool of communication in college English teaching has becomeincreasingly conspicuous. Interactive teaching has been widely acknowledged in the field ofsecond language teaching as an effective way to improve language output. Students areregarded as the subjects in the process of learning in this teaching model, which makes useof abundant interactive activities, and can effectively eliminate the imbalance between inputand output in current EFL. However, the manners of implementation and characteristics of thismethod require students to have abundant interests and motivations to participate in andmaintain the teacher-student interaction. Thus, the inspiration of motivation has become thekey to improve the effect of interactive teaching. At present, the traditional teacher-centeredteaching method still occupies a dominating position in different stages of EFL, so that thereare still problems such as low acceptance and indifference existing in the performance ofinteractive teaching. Thus, the effects of interactive teaching are always unsatisfactory.Incentive theories came into existence in 1930s, and were first applied to enterprisemanagement. Well-known incentive theories include Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow,1943), Herzberg’s two-factor theory (Frederick Herzberg, Bernard Mausner & BarbaraSnyderman, 1959), Vroom’s expectancy theory (Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy theory)(Vroom, 1964), and Adams’equity theory, etc. A lot of researches have also been done on theeffects of motivations in the process of second language acquisition with the development ofincentive theories. Incentive teaching approach refers to an educational process, in whichcertain means and manners are used to inspire the motivations and inner driving forces ofstudents, who are induced to actively participate in study and make efforts to achieve expectedgoals, so that the classroom efficiency is improved and the implementation of teaching tasksare promoted (Ren Fei, Zhu Aiqiong, 1997). Its motivation-centered feature just meets thehigh demand of motivation in interactive teaching.Currently, there are researches on the application of interactive teaching and incentiveteaching approach in English teaching, but empirical researches combining the two methodsare rare. This thesis attempts to use incentive teaching approach in interactive college English learning, in order to explore whether the combination of the two methods can enhance theparticipation frequency and English proficiency of students involved in interactive teaching.A quasi-experiment has been conducted in 125 sophomores of non-English major fromtwo natural classes of Lishan College, Shandong Normal University. Interactive teaching iscarried out in both classes. One class composed of 60 students is chosen as the experimentalclass, in which incentive teaching approach is implemented. And the other class composed of65 students is chosen as the control class without the implementation of incentive teachingapproach. During the process of the experiment, the participation frequencies of interactiveactivities of students in both classes were observed and recorded, and then scored according toquantitative standards in the form of daily performance scores. Students of both classes wereinterviewed to show their perceptions about interactive teaching. After the experiment,students of the experimental class were required to do a questionnaire about incentive teachingapproach, in order to show their knowledge and acceptance of it. The participation frequenciesof interactive activities and results of pre-test and post-test were analyzed with SPSS in theprocess of descriptive statistics and analysis of independent sample tests. Meanwhile,qualitative analysis was undertaken to analyze the results of the questionnaire and interviews.The research results indicate that the employment of incentive teaching approach ininteractive teaching has positive effects in the participation positivity and English level ofstudents. With the implementation of incentive teaching approach, the experimental classperformed much better in the processes of classroom dynamics, student attendance, classroomdiscipline, and teacher-student interaction. According to the qualitative and quantitativeanalysis results, the English level of experimental class was also improved comparing withthat of the control class. Restricted by factors such as textbook, time, and classroom size, thereare problems such as uncontrollable interactive activities, monotonous incentive methods, anddifficulties in ensuring the participation of every student in combined large classes during theprocess of experiment. Based on the findings and problems of the quasi-experiment, the authorprovides some suggestions for further perfecting interactive teaching, hoping to provide someimplications for college English teaching.