A Study Of Music Majors' Experiential English Learning In Secondary Vocational Schools

In secondary vocational schools,English is still a very important subject especially for music students as one of the tools for study and foreign communication.However,the students need to spend a lot of time and energy studying and practicing majors and usually do not attach importance to other subjects,and teachers always follow the traditional teaching methods,all these resulting in poor situations and results of English learning.In order to change this,the author applied experiential learning to the music majors' English learning of a secondary vocational school and conducted an experiment for a whole semester to explore the following two problems: 1.Can experiential learning enhance the interest of music majors in English learning? 2.Can experiential learning improve the English proficiency of music majors?The present study conducted an experiment in two parallel classes of the ninth grade in junior high school which is affiliated to the Conservatory of Music,using the same materials but different methods.During the experiment,the researcher abandoned the traditional teaching method in the experimental class and adopted Kolb's experiential learning model,and guiding the experimental class students to actively learn something through doing(experiencing)rather than passively learn something.Before class,students took turns to prepare daily reports which were related to the topic and teaching content of the unit with the help of the teacher,and the teacher arranged the teaching content of the entire class,designed suitable and useful tasks,and guided and helped students to prepare the report.During the class,the teacher guided the reporter to present and the rest students to learn from it,introduced new knowledge,led students to observe and reflect and conceptualize the new knowledge initially,and then students completed the important experience of self-studying textbook with apreliminary understanding of new knowledge.This is the end of the first learning circle and the beginning of the second one.Then students presented self-study results,the teacher revised the exercises,explained new knowledge,and guided students to observe and reflect to form a systematic conceptualization of the new knowledge.And then students applied knowledge to a new task.This is the end of the second learning circle and the beginning of the third one.After the students completed the task,they showed it in the class,observed,reflected and evaluated,so as to conceptualize new knowledge again.After class,to consolidate the new knowledge,students completed assignment.Until now,the third learning circle is completed.Throughout the whole teaching process,the students experienced and performed some learning tasks,completed three learning circles,and effectively constructed and applied new knowledge.The researcher conducted two questionnaires and two examinations before and after the experiment in the experimental class and the controlled class.After the experiment,the researcher used SPSS to analyze the data of results and conducted an interview.Finally,it is concluded that experiential learning is very helpful to the English learning for music majors in secondary vocational schools.Students' interest and proficiency of English learning were both greatly improved,and the English learning enthusiasm has never been higher.When designing the tasks and situations for students to experience,the researcher thought about making good use of the positive and generous characteristics of the music students,who were good at listening,speaking,and performing.Therefore,the experimental results were outstanding.However,how to make good use of students' music characteristics through the experiential learning model to enable students to maintain their interest in English learning and to improve English proficiency still needs to be further studied.