Advantages and Disadvantages of College English Grading Teaching

Mode

Huang Juan

Professional Arts Institute of Hubei, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, China

Keywords: College English, Grading Teaching Mode, Advantages, Disadvantages.

Abstract: With the improvement of China’s international status, English, as an international language, has been

attached with more and more importance by people. Through a summary of college teaching modes and a

research of grading teaching mode, this work analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the grading

teaching mode, with the proposal of some thoughts about college teaching modes as well.

1 INTRODUCTION

Among various English tests during the college

years, the beginning of CET-4 and CET-6 is one of

the most important indexes for measuring the

English level of students. College English Test plays

a positive role in China’s college English teaching.

The test results could reflect the teaching

achievements of English teaching workers directly

as well as the English learning ability of students,

providing theoretical basis for teachers to deepen the

teaching work more comprehensively [1]. However,

there are still many problems in grade examination.

The comprehensive application ability of students

can’t be fostered. Therefore, we should try to

improve the quality of college English teachers

while continuously perfecting the grading system, so

as to comprehensively improve the teaching quality

of college English.

2 DEVELOPMENT HISTORY OF

COLLEGE ENGLISH

TEACHING

College English is the most important component of

English language teaching. It is an important stage

for students from school to society as well as a

transition from theoretical learning to practical

application. Therefore, the English education of this

stage is of great importance [2]. The college English

teaching in China has gone through a long history.

Since the 20th century, every historical period has

made reform under the guidance of certain education

policies.

2.1 Stage of Promulgating English

Syllabus

Since the founding of new China, the foreign

language teaching was mainly Russian. It is not until

1962 that China has promulgated the first English

Syllabus and begun to promote the education of

English. The main requirement of this stage was

reading, without syllabus requirements in listening,

speaking and writing. Besides, the teaching work

remained in “teaching”. Teachers took the

impartment of knowledge as the main task and let

students learn and accept the knowledge

mechanically without considering the “learning”

problem [3]. The classroom atmosphere was always

dull, which could not motivate the enthusiasm of

students and inspire the English thinking of students.

2.2 Stage of Reform and Opening-up

Along with the Reform and Opening-up, China has

continued to enhance the communication with

countries in the world, thus making English learning

extremely urgent. At that time, a batch of

international scholars, who had learned advanced

theories of the times, returned from beyond the sea.

Based on the English learning requirements at that

time, they compiled a new College English Syllabus.

The Syllabus requires: the purpose of college

English teaching is to cultivate students’ strong pre-

reading ability, certain listening and translation

ability as well as preliminary writing and speaking

338

Juan H.

Advantages and Disadvantages of College English Grading Teaching Mode.

DOI: 10.5220/0006025703380342

In Proceedings of the Information Science and Management Engineering III (ISME 2015), pages 338-342

ISBN: 978-989-758-163-2

ability. The new Syllabus covers every aspect of

English teaching, but it is mainly aimed at

cultivating students' reading ability. Focusing only

on the impartment of knowledge, teachers can’t

motivate the enthusiasm of students. They didn’t

separate the reading class from the listening and

speaking class, neglecting the practical application

ability of students.

In this stage, objective and accurate analysis on

the quality of English teaching was made for the

purpose of making students learn and use English

much better and promoting the implementation of

teaching syllabus. And the assessment of college

students’ practical English ability was made, too.

Since 1986, Chinese Educational Department has

begun to implement the CET-4 and CET-6(College

English Test, CET).

Though the efficiency in management, academy

and education was relatively low, China still paid

much attention to the education of college English

and put forward higher and higher requirements for

college English teaching.

2.3 Stage after Entering the 21th

Century

Since the beginning of the new century, China has

had an ever closer cooperation with countries in the

world as China’s social economy develops

continuously. Domestic forms are also in constant

development. “Emphasizing reading skills” couldn’t

meet the requirements of the current society for the

English ability of college students. With the

development of high technology and network

technology English, computer have been gradually

applied into the English teaching. Multimedia has

also been widely used in English teaching.

To meet the practical requirements of

contemporary college students for learning English,

the Ministry of Education formally launched the

College English Curriculum Requirements in 2007.

It specifies the teaching purpose of college English

as “cultivating the comprehensive application ability

of students, especially listening and speaking ability.

Enable them to communicate in English effectively

and enhance their independent learning ability at the

same time.” This reform has imposed extremely

profound influence on the teaching philosophy,

teaching target, teaching mode and teaching

evaluation system of college English. In December,

2008, China has made pilot reforms in CET-4 and

CET-6, the listening part of which has increased to

70% while the composition part is on the increase,

too. This reform could help make an evaluation of

students’ practical application ability in listening,

speaking, reading and translation.

3 VARIETIES OF COLLEGE

EDUCATION MODES

3.1 Traditional English Teaching Mode

In this kind of teaching mode, teachers fully play a

leading role in teaching, emphasizing the mastery of

the basic knowledge of the language. Students

mainly grasp the knowledge in the classroom and

consolidate the knowledge after class. When making

examinations, the function of normal times makes a

smaller proportion while the final grades occupy a

majority of proportion, generally 70%.

3.2 English Teaching Mode with the

Assistance of Multimedia

With the overall improvement of Chinese education,

many schools begin to equip classrooms with

multimedia, providing more English information for

students via campus network. Meanwhile, teachers

could make PowerPoint autonomously by using the

educational means of multimedia, presenting the

teaching content more vividly. What’s more,

teachers could, according to the characteristics of

students, explain the key and difficult points

targetedly with the combination of listening and

speaking, which is of great help for the cultivation of

students’ English ability.

3.3 Graded English Teaching Mode

Current college English education is primarily a

teaching mode centered on teachers. This kind of

mode is teacher-oriented which neglects the learning

ability of different students. Therefore, it’s difficult

to solve the problem of uneven scores of different

students. The graded teaching mode of English is

hence given birth to. This kind of teaching mode

separates students according to their achievements,

classifying them into fast class, middle class and

slow class. Different teaching plans and teaching

tasks are formulated for students with different

foreign language foundations. This form could meet

the requirements of students with different foreign

language foundation and learning abilities and

improve the English application ability of students in

a comprehensive way.

Advantages and Disadvantages of College English Grading Teaching Mode

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Advantages and Disadvantages of College English Grading Teaching Mode

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3.4 Grading Teaching Mode

The National College English Test is a national

teaching examination, the purpose of which is to

make objective and accurate measurements of

college students’ practical English ability, thus

providing services for college English teaching.

College English Test is a large-scale standardized

examination, serving as a standard for teaching

evaluation. After years of reform, College English

Test has been widely recognized, producing great

values. Take this as an opportunity, graded teaching

mode appears in college education. In this mode,

teachers, taking grading test as the mode, exercise

the listening, reading, writing, and translation ability

of students according to the question types in the

examination, which help improve the practical

English level of college students to a certain extent.

Yet, there are still some problems. For example, the

application ability of English can’t be fully

exercised.

4 ADVANTAGES OF COLLEGE

GRADING TEACHING MODE

4.1 Improving the English Teaching

Level in China

CET-4 and CET-6 have aroused the attention of

administers in colleges and universities to college

English teaching, greatly mobilizing the enthusiasm

of teachers and students. A large number of

statistical data shows that CET-4 and CET-6 have a

high credibility as well as high examination

efficiency, which meet the quality requirements of

large-scale standardized tests and help finish

teachers’ teaching tasks and students’ learning tasks

required by College English Syllabus. Meanwhile,

they could reflect the English level of Chinese

college students. In this way, this kind of tests could

effectively help promote the implementation of

College English Syllabus and improve the college

English teaching level in China.

4.2 Checking the Teaching Work of

Teachers

College English Test is a measurement of students’

grasp of basic English knowledge and English

application ability during the college years. The

annual CET-4 and CET-6 could provide a large

amount of true and reliable data for us, which could

not only help teaching management departments at

all levels to analyze the problems of college students

in every aspect, but also provide actual theoretical

and data basis for abstract English learning. Through

CET4 and CET6, English educators could analyze

the actual English situation of the school and grade

based on the real data. Hence, they could make

measurements of the practical English ability of

college students objectively and figure out solutions

to specific problems, in order to serve for college

English teaching better.

4.3 Measuring the English Level of

Students

The CET-4 and CET-6 held annually by China are

unified proposition based on College English

Syllabus. Students study and make practice

according to the question types in the grade

examination. Teachers could also explain the key

and difficult points in the exam comprehensively,

which is good for students to grasp the basic English

knowledge and application abilities in other aspects.

Examining the level that students have achieved

during the college learning stage through this kind of

grade test is to make an objective and fair evaluation

of students’ practical application ability of English.

4.4 Setting an Evaluation Standard

After the education reform, college English test

adopts modern educational statistics. The scores are

usually equivalent-treated, which could reflect the

English level of Chinese college students objectively

with high-credibly. At present, College English Test

has been widely recognized by the society,

becoming one of the standards for personnel

departments at all levels and the employing units to

measure the English level of college students.

5 DISADVANTAGE OF COLLEGE

ENGLISH TEACHING MODE

5.1 Being Unable to Learn Professional

English

With China’s internationalization level rising

continuously and its communication with foreign

countries more frequent, English becomes an

international communication language. We can get

access to a lot of English in life. For example,

watching an English movie when entertaining,

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reading a piece of English news when having a rest,

or reading related English Literature during the

learning process. College years are a critical period

for us to face the world and learn a language.

Learning English well could help us know the world

more extensively and widely.

As a college student, there is a lot of professional

knowledge to be learned during the university

period. Only professional knowledge gets linked up

with the world could it be better used. Accordingly,

reading English Literature and understanding the

foreign research progress is particularly important.

For example, the computer specialty, which

develops rapidly in the world at present, demands

college students to be equipped with very good

professional English knowledge. Currently, 80% of

computer professional knowledge in the world is

recorded and transmitted in English. Though China’s

science and technology develops rapidly, there is

still a long distance from Indian country. The main

reason is that the mother language of India is

English, which enables India to have a advantage

over China in language. Only computer major

students could read the code and write programs.

Therefore, only learning English well could you

become a qualified programmer.

5.2 Only Being Able to Take an

Examination with Weak Practical

Application Ability

There has always been a lot of debate about whether

CET-4 and CET-6 could be taken as a standard to

check teachers’ teaching ability and students’

learning level of English in China. Experts think that

the purpose of language test is to check if learners

have certain language ability while that of language

teaching is to cultivate the ability of students to use

this language. Grade test, to a certain extent, checks

and evaluates the teaching quality, but it has certain

negative effects at the same time. Under this kind of

teaching mode, it is easy for teachers to deviate from

the teaching direction of cultivating the practical

language ability of student required by teaching

syllabus. Teachers would coach the students

according to the requirements of grade test, but the

teaching methods they adopt are usually not closely

connected with grade examination, such as reciting

good sentences and paragraphs, reading articles and

so on. Yet, a discussion and statement of one

problem is usually neglected. Meanwhile, students

would try to grasp different skills to answer each

kind of questions according to the examination kinds

of questions. Some students could achieve high

grades, but when encountering a real English

situation, they would become “dumb”. During the

learning process, students could grasp some

fragmentary language information. The knowledge

system is not comprehensive. The practical

communication ability of student is bad. This kind of

grade examination has an impact on the teaching

mode of teachers. The students from this kind of

teaching mode are all examination-oriented

personnel with low application ability.

5.3 Being Unable to Cultivate the

Comprehensive Ability

English, as a foreign language, is to make

communication better. However, under the teaching

mode of College English Test, both teachers and

students are focused on the examination papers,

which restrict the teaching thinking of teacher as

well as the development capacity of students. Apart

from basic grammatical competence and reading

ability, English, as a communication language, has a

wide coverage, including sociolinguistic competence

and language communication strategy. Besides,

there will be language culture problems during the

communication. The process of learning English is a

process which we masters linguistic knowledge and

finish the language communication. During this

process, we need to accept and learn the knowledge

background of English and cultural history so as to

exclude the interference of mother tongue, avoid the

phenomenon of language errors caused by the

mother tongue and establish English thinking.

Obviously, the teaching mode of grade test could not

improve the international communication ability of

student, which is unfavorable for students to use

language comprehensively.

6 THOUGHTS ON GRADING

TEACHING MODE

College English Test has been recognized by the

society. CET-4 and CET-6 have promoted the

development of college English teaching and

improved the status of College English subject in

China. We should fully affirm the historic

contribution it makes to the English level of Chinese

college students. However, CET-4 and CET-6, to a

certain extent, have also limited China’s college

English teaching mode. They haven’t improved the

quality of China’s college English teaching

substantially, nor have they improved the

Advantages and Disadvantages of College English Grading Teaching Mode

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Advantages and Disadvantages of College English Grading Teaching Mode

341

comprehensive English application ability of

Chinese college students. All in all, we should make

some reforms while insisting on the grading teaching

mode, trying to avoid the negative effects brought by

test-oriented teaching and learning and provide more

space for the development of college English

teaching. In this way, it could help college English

teaching develop in a healthy way and improve the

communicative ability of students, thus improving

their comprehensive ability to apply English in a real

way.

REFERENCES

Shen Ting, Development Course of College English

Teaching, Journal of the Party School of Guizhou of

the Communist Party of China, 2012(02), 12-14.

Xiao Haozhang, Wang Limei. A Preliminary Study on the

Reform of College English Teaching Mode, Foreign

Languages and Their Teaching, 2007(02, 59-61.

Cheng Lengjie, Qin Qiu. College English Teaching Mode

and CET4&CET6, Foreign Language World,

2004(06), 125-127.

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