Comparative Study On College Foreign Language Curriculum Design

The21st century needs intellectuals with high quality and capability. Furthermore, with the high frequency of international exchange, the status of college foreign language becomes more and more important. In China, foreign language is compulsory course, and the researcher would explore the problem of college foreign language curriculum design from the angle of present conditions and international competitions with the purpose of constructing a suitable and efficient communicative method to meet the fast development of our country. Investigation shows that after several years’ college language study students are still far from being perfect in their actual language abilities. One of the main reasons is that colleges or universities still can not solve the problems, in other words, the curriculum design can not meet the student needs to develop the applicability and compatibility. College foreign language curriculum design attaches highly importance of the teaching of teachers and the learning of students; as far as the current college foreign language curriculum design concerned, the phenomena of "dumb English" and "deaf English" affects the international communication and practical applicability, so the college foreign language curriculum design is highly need of being improved.This thesis aims at making comparative study on college foreign language curriculum design about the College foreign language between America and China. Through the comparison of two college foreign language curriculum design, the thesis finds out the differences and points out the importance of communicative competence. College foreign language curriculum design should be set up to improve the language ability of students under the basis of need analysis. College foreign language curriculum design is one large systematic project covering object, target, content, method and evaluation. In this thesis, the goal, implementation and evaluation of college foreign language curriculum design are discussed and the problems of college foreign language curriculum design in China are pointed out and strategy of developing the college foreign language curriculum design is found out as well. In a word, the college foreign language curriculum design should lay emphasis on communicative competence and the feasibility of language ability. College English teaching aims to cultivate the students’ comprehensive ability, especially listening and speaking skills, and they are the essential elements of their future work and social interactions for they can be able to effectively in English both written and spoken communication. According to the needs of students the college English course can arouse the enthusiasm of students learning and can improve the English application abilities. To meet the demand of students is a huge and tough task, and to improve the college foreign language curriculum design is feasible.Through field investigation during the past two months, the thesis makes a comparative study between two colleges in America and China about the college foreign language curriculum design. The target school is the State of New York University Binghamton University and Southwest University Yucai College. The target of students are the freshmen in Confucius College in Binghamton University and the freshmen in Yucai College and they are non-native speakers and they treat the foreign language as the third language (including the dialect). Through the comparative study, there are many places to be improved in the college foreign language curriculum design in China. Simultaneously, there are benefits from the college foreign language curriculum design in the State of New York University Binghamton University in America. The study of the thesis embarks on the introduction of the methodology including research questions, subjects and instruments. In the subsequent chapters of the thesis, a more comprehensive justification of the notion of college foreign language curriculum design has been conducted. Firstly, comparative study on college foreign language curriculum design both in State University of New York at Binghamton and in Southwest University Yucai College in China is given in details. The comparison of curriculum goals, curriculum implementation and curriculum evaluation are under the theoretical support of Nunan (1988) and Richards (2000). Secondly, similarity and difference of college foreign language curriculum design are given through the comparative study. Thirdly, reasons on the difference of college foreign language curriculum design between two colleges are discussed. Resource problem and environmental problem and curriculum evaluation are the reasons on the difference of college foreign language curriculum design. Finally, some suggestions are given to improve the college foreign language curriculum design especially the language ability to meet the needs of students. As for improving the college foreign language curriculum design, three aspects of suggestion are given under the theoretical support of Brown (1994), as follows, need analysis, methodology and goals and objectives.