Research On Negotiation-based College English Teaching With A Case Study

The Chinese Ministry of Education at the beginning of2004released the publication of ’College English Curriculum Requirements (trial)’, which particularly emphasizes the value of students’ communicative competence, especially the ability of listening, comprehension, and speaking. And the Ministry has encouraged a nation-wide program of teaching reform. Nevertheless, any attempt from teachers who try to change the traditional teaching style and adopt Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) college English reform advocates risks resistance or even resentment from the students. Serious mismatches occur between the theory and practice when teachers apply CLT to the Chinese college English teaching situation. Most teachers have succeeded in absorbing some activities of CLT but failed to analyze the prerequisite conditions in CLT.How can we adopt the activities of some teaching approaches such as CLT and at the same time use the notions implied in them? The thesis holds that negotiation between teachers and students is one of the best solutions. This thesis shows how negotiation helps improve college English teaching, especially to better bridge the gaps between teacher’s teaching and students’ learning. Negotiation between teachers and students can help create a harmonious and ideal learning situation which is important in English learning.The main characteristic of NCET in the decision making stage of setting teaching objectives is negotiation between teachers and students. According to the College English Curriculum Requirement (Chinese Ministry of Education,2004),the process of making teaching decisions should become more democratic and students have more choices in participating in teaching process. According to Habemas’ Communicative Action Theory, NECT tries to set up the inter-subject relation which means the dialogic relation in which both teachers and students are inter-subjects who are characterized with feature of inter-subjectivity through negotiating with each other. Advocating negotiation in teaching can ease the anxiety of learning among students and build their democratic characteristics. The thesis constructs the theoretical framework of how to use negotiation in College English teaching. The problem is explored from different aspects of college English teaching including the teaching objectives, the teaching process, the teaching methods, the teaching materials, and the teaching conditions. The thesis mainly discusses the issue of negotiation in the process of decision-making stage in those aspects. The thesis concludes a case study conducted for the pragmatic effectiveness.60students and2teachers from Zhejiang Vocational College of Commerce took part in the study.The thesis begins with the introduction to the thesis. Chapter Ⅱ is the background of the thesis, which is mainly about the problems existing in China’s college English teaching and introduces some basic concepts of NECT. Chapter Ⅲ describes the teaching objectives in NECT. Students and teachers, the teaching process, the teaching environment, the teaching methods, and the teaching content are under discussion from Chapter Ⅳ to Chapter Ⅷ. Chapter Ⅸ presents a case study the author did. The last chapter is the conclusion...