An Investigation On The Ecology Of College English Classroom

Over the20th century, educational ecology, using ecological theories and principles to study educational system, has already been considered as a strong theoretical analysis approach and provided a new vision for educational researches. During the process of making use of ecological theories to study educational phenomena and enhance teaching effect, researchers have established and utilized "classroom ecology" to construct ecological classroom. On the basis of educational ecology theory, examining English classroom with an ecological perspective,"ecological classroom" makes a contribution to leading English education to sustainable development.In recent years, the rapid development of higher vocational education in our country, provides more opportunities to receive higher vocational education for a large number of students, but also brings about a series of problems in classroom teaching, especially College English classroom teaching. Therefore, with classroom ecology as a useful theoretical tool, this study makes use of a survey to investigate the ecological situation of College English classroom in a local vocational college, in which368participants, including350students and18English teachers, are involved in data collection through questionnaire, interview as well as classroom observation.Data analysis indicates that as for the status quo of the ecological factors in College English classroom, there exist a great number of non-ecological phenomena. Making a comparison between the collected data and the ecological laws and principles, the researcher further explains and analyzes the non-ecological problems and summarizes the five imbalanced phenomena in the current College English classroom, including imbalance between ecological subject and ecological environment; imbalance between exam-oriented education and individual’s sustainable development; imbalance between teaching mode, method and subjects’subjectivity, learning autonomy; imbalance between teaching content and social requirement, as well as imbalance between evaluation system and ecological subjects’niche.Then, some suggestions to improve the non-ecological situation and resolve the imbalanced problems so as to construct ecological English classroom are proposed in terms of classroom scale, seat arrangement, teachers"’educational belief, view about students, strategic knowledge, teacher-student and student-student interaction as well as teaching evaluation system according to the related ecological theories.It is known that foreign language teaching in China has been dominantly dependent on the classroom teaching for long. However, the traditional classroom teaching contains the thoughts of scientific paradigm and rational domination, making English teaching a single, static, dogma mode that lacking life significance. Nowadays, information technology, especially network, has penetrated into every aspect of modern life, dramatically changing learners’ life and learning style. The pure traditional classroom teaching is far from satisfactory to meet learners’ demands, which in turn requires, drawing support from multimedia network, the appropriate adjustment in the various aspects of subject teaching to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages.Therefore, considering that taking root in the micro teaching level--English classroom, the non-ecological and imbalanced problems can be only partly, superficially relieved through these suggestions or strategies, resorting to the functions of multimedia network, the adjustment in the present English teaching from a broader and macro perspective, is of significance and in necessity. Hence, on the basis of the theories and principles of educational ecology and the present English teaching environment in higher vocational colleges, the researcher puts forward some suggestions for ecological English teaching under the environment of multimedia network.By establishing College English online teaching platform of higher vocational college, the organic combination of "network teaching" and "classroom teaching" can be realized through online lesson appointment, the teaching content that adapts social requirements can be selected, personalized teaching plan and methods can be implemented, and thus, the transition of learning objective from examination-oriented mastery of basic language skills to diversified, comprehensive language competence can be realized. In this way, the present situation of College English classroom ecology will be improved with the imbalanced shortcomings of pure classroom teaching overcome.