Breaking the Silence in College English Class:

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Breaking the Silence in College English Class

• Implementing a 10-week
• Task-based Project at SDJZU
• Yang Jing

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Part I General Status of English Teaching at
SDJZU
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Reading Writing Course
1 attractive PPT And latest video are presented
2 activities like role-playing if time and
content permits
1 PPT from textbook publishers 2 specific for
some task 3 from internet
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Examples

• 1 PPT from textbook publisher
• ??Unit 4(2012?)(take this as an
  example).ppt
• 2 PPT related to specific writing task
• Helen Keller.ppt

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• 3 Video related to old topic, e.g. success

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Characteristics

• half Chinese half English, otherwise, students
  are totally lost
• 14.3 of the class preview the text with 20 of
  the class finishing the textbook completely new
• Silent and passive and sleepy most of time
• Teacher-centered content-centered focusing on
  language points, grammar and cultural background

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Viewing-listening-Speaking Course

• Listening
• they each have a
• Computer,
• Autonomous learning in intranet showing the
  content of textbook with process set by teachers

Viewing
Speaking
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Data related to the course

• 47.1 believe its interesting to have the
  autonomous learning
• 42.8 do not choose speaking exercise at all in
  1.5 hours per week
• Worst of all, attentive listening activities
  resulted in students not paying much attention,
  secretly playing games, sleeping or being absent.
• More than 50 hope teachers design tasks
  stimulating them to speak in English

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The Class is Silent because

• 1 They think it is wasting time to listen to
  non-standard English from others
• 2 They just want to learn more new words to pass
  exams instead of practicing spoken English
  because there is no assessment for the latter, at
  least in the short-term.

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Cultural factors

• He who talks too much is prone to error, silence
  is gold
• Show much respect to teachers
• Anxiety to lose face to say something wrong

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• How to Break Silence?

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Part II Task-based Teaching Project

• based on a 2002 paper by Begalar and Hunt,
• Our Project covers a 10 week timespan

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The Procedure Week 1

• In class, articulate the whole project to
  students before they undertake various listening
  tasks while viewing the video
• After class, students must form groups (7-8
  people) before the next class, collecting the
  topics they are interested in (topics available
  in course textbooks)

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Reference for the topics

• Preferable topics in order to keep maintain
  interest levels to carry through the project.
• e.g. How to finance your college Campus
  love Job interview Educational
  Loan Virtual Risks

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Week 2

• In ClassThe teacher checks each groups
  ideas,each group should tentatively settle on two
  topics
• After class,everyone write one or two paragraphs
  to explain their topic and design 5 questions or
  a questionnaire for the interview next class

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Week 3-Week 4

• In class,Groups brainstorm and decide the
  possible questions and practice the interview
• After class,members begin to gather and organize
  data from the interview and write a brief report,
  preparing to represent to other members of the
  group.

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Week 5

• In class teacher explains how the presentations
  can be made, showing the video about presenting
  skills, highlighting such aspects as eye contact,
  the use of gestures and PPT, and voice
  projection
• After class the group will get a representative
  to make the presentation and practice

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The Assessment

•  Week 6 Week 10
• Presentations are given group by group
• in front of the whole class
• Teachers and students then grade each presentation

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Differences

1. Teachers encourage students to present what they
   write via email, but it is a big group, so only
   those who are responsible for the team contact
   teachers.
2. Students are required to finish the listening and
   viewing parts of the textbook, so the time for
   the task is only 30 min each time.
3. 517 students average of 60-80 students in each
   class.
4. Majors Environmental Engineering, Thermo-Energy,
   Materials Civil Engineering, Informational
   Administration

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Extending Activities
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Positive Impact

1. they need to listen to others talk
2. they need to express themselves clearly letting
   others to accept their own ideas
3. they try to produce methods to make successful
   presentation to demonstrate team work
4. they feel anxious when facing problems but
   pleased upon the solution of each problem

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• We ask the students to move!
• They learn to solve a problem or finish a task by
  communication in a foreign language.
• We feel the teacher is like an engine of a car
  instead of dragging a heavy cart stuck in mud.

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Related Data that add new experience to our
teaching

• Survey show that 63 of the involved students
  believed they totally changed their minds towards
  College English Class
• 59 of the total believe the project gives them
  new insight into communication

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• We break the silence in English class, and
  enlarge the proportion of speaking session in
  Viewing-listening-speaking course, increasing it
  to 25 of the whole course.

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Comparative Analysis
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Problems

• 1. Division of the group is a big challenge
• divide groups by roommates
• divide randomly
• do not make any movement
• special reference
• 2. To revise the ppt and report for students, to
  encourage those lacking confidence, to improve
  their pronunciation makes teachers feel hectic
  throughout the process

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• Students need to change the way to finish
  assignment or assessment
• Before translation exercise with the same answer
  given by teachers.
• Now they have to decide together how to
  interview, and how to express ideas clearly
  (activities that tend to require much time and
  effort)

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Challenges

• 1 Teachers need to do more regarding language
  accuracy when focusing on communicative purpose.
• teachers should try to find a way to form groups
  making sure good conditions for scaffolding are
  in place , especially after level instruction is
  applied at the university,with 5 of students
  with highest grades in English forming a new
  class.
• .

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Insight

• Vygotsky believes that the teachers labor may
  similarly be differentiated into the provision of
  content and the organization of the social
  environment

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Bibliography

• Beglar, D., Hunt, A. (2002). Implementing
  task-based language teaching. In J. Richards WA
  Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language
  teaching An anthology of current practice (pp.
  96-106). Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
• Vygotsky, L.S. 1997 Collected works, volume 3.
  New York and London Plenum.

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• Thank you for listening.
• Comments are welcome!