李云玉
上海政法学院语言文化学院 上海 201701
Abstract:
The phenomenon of "mute English" and "deaf English" among today's college students is the inevitable result of the traditional aim of English teaching, which is for accuracy. Today's society requires English teachers to pay more attention to develop students' ability to understand the different modes of thinking between the two languages, so that students can "acquire" the ability to use English rather than "learn" how to use it. The focus of English teaching is to cultivate the habits of using language. Students should be encouraged to think and express in the English way actively. In this process, mistakes are inevitable, while teachers should try their best to tolerate them and start error analysis procedures to improve them afterwards.
Key words:
different modes of thinking, English teaching, error analysis, tolerance, improve
There is a general trend in college English classes to treat English as a second language course and to emphasize learners' learning of the language. Affected by this trend, vocabulary and grammar have become the focus of English teaching and even the whole teaching content. Students are required to use "standard" English to avoid grammar and vocabulary mistakes, which become the most concentrated problem. The defects of this teaching mode are obvious. Students may get high scores in multiple-choice tests of four choices, but the actual communicative function of language is neglected, resulting in the weakening of students' language application ability and even the phenomenon of so-called "mute English" and "Deaf English".
In view of this phenomenon, many college English teachers have put forward the concept of "communicative" teaching method and put it into practice actively, which has achieved good results. The "communicative" teaching method makes teaching and students' participation in class lively and higher. Furthermore, their listening and speaking ability has been greatly practiced and their language practical application skills have been significantly improved.
However, a certain number of students do not reap the benefits mentioned above in "communicative" English classes. The main factor that prevents them from participating in classroom interactions is from the fear that they may make mistakes in their presentation. For extroverted students, such fear is often easy to overcome, and several mistakes cannot dim their enthusiasm to participate in class communication. For students who are introverted, this fear can be an insurmountable obstacle. Even a single or small misexpression can silence them and make them the "audience" and "spectator" of the class.
Therefore, in the face of students' mistakes, it’s not a good choice to correct them immediately. Otherwise, students' mistakes will be publicized and amplified in front of all members of the class, forming a kind of "punishment" for wrong expressions. At the same time, this "punishment" serves as a "warning" to other students who are preparing to speak, greatly reinforcing their existing fears. A better approach would be to be tolerant when students make mistakes and try to highlight the merits of what they say. This will undoubtedly help those introverted students to overcome their fears and motivate them to participate more in class discussions, thus forming an environment of common improvement and progress for all students to the greatest extent.
It is inevitable for students to make some mistakes in class. Let’s make it clear from the perspective of psycholinguistics. When psycholinguists discuss the parts of the human brain associated with language, they often refer to the Broca and Wernicke regions. The former is mainly responsible for language generation, while the latter is mainly responsible for information collection and meaning processing. In 1997, Joy Hersh, an American neuroscientist, compared two groups of subjects and found that adults use different brain regions when learning a second language than children do. Both groups of subjects were proficient in both languages, but their experiences of learning a second language differed. One group grew up in bilingual households and learned a foreign language when they were children from their parents or other family members (Group A). Another group grew up in monolingual homes and learned a foreign language when grew up (Group B). In the experiment, Hersh asked two groups of subjects to recall the things they had done from the previous day, in their native language and then again in a foreign language. Hersh used an MRI machine to monitor brain activity, particularly in the Broca and Wernicke regions, while the subjects were instructed to recall memories in two languages. By looking at blood flow in both areas, the researchers could gauge how active they were. The MRI showed that blood supply in the Wernicke area was about the same in both groups, whether they were thinking in their native language or a foreign language. This suggests that when the brain is collecting and processing information, differences between languages have no effect on thought processes. However, there are significant differences in the use of Broca region between the two groups: when thinking in two languages successively, the experimental subjects from group A invariably use the same part of Broca region; People from group B were using different parts of the region. In other words, when different languages are used, the language generation mechanism of those who have mastered two languages in childhood is consistent. People who learn a second language as adults use a foreign language in a different way from their native language.
Hersh explains that language learning in children is actually a process of "installing" language in the brain. At birth, the person's brain nerve does not develop completely. As the brain's language centers mature with age and language learning, different languages can be "installed" in the brain using the same language generation mechanisms. This process occurs only once in a person's life. By the time a child is fluent in a language (monolingual or bilingual), the brain's linguistic machinery is already set. After that, learning a foreign language must form another language generation mechanism. This is why people often fail to reach the level of proficiency with their mother tongue when using a foreign language.
To sum up, college English teaching in China should be based on the following two facts: first, the vast majority of Chinese families are not bilingual families, and English education generally starts late (English teaching starts from junior middle school in most regions, and from primary school in some developed regions). Some start in kindergarten, but only in some big cities. Secondly, college English teaching is a foreign language education for adults, who are different in personality and have different levels in English. It is the responsibility of every college English teacher to cultivate and protect the enthusiasm for learning and the enthusiasm for classroom participation of those students who are more introverted. In the course of implementing the "communicative" teaching method, teachers' tolerance of some expression errors can better reflect the spirit of educational equality than timely correction.
In fact, in English teaching, teachers should pay attention to develop students' ability to understand the different thinking and expression modes between two languages. Learners should "acquire" a language rather than "learn" it. The English teaching process focuses on the cultivation of language habits rather than the logical or academic analytical process. Students should be encouraged to think and express themselves actively and freely in English. As for the mistakes students make in English expression, teachers can start the error analysis program to correct them afterwards.
When correcting mistakes, it is necessary for teachers to analyse the types and causes of the mistakes made by students. Chomsky believes that language learners acquire two types of abilities in the application of a language. One is “Competence” that is similar to or close to their mother tongue. Competence comes from learners' mastery of language knowledge and their understanding and conscious application of their thinking patterns. The other is the ability to use the learned language knowledge to express the language intention. This ability comes from the language transformation process in the learner's mind. The errors caused by the problems of the former ability can be classified into the category of "error". Mistakes caused by the latter ability can be classified as "mistake", such as a slip of the tongue. The error that needs special analysis in the teaching process is the former, namely "error". Most linguists and language teaching researchers believe that the error analysis procedure generally consists of five steps: identifying the error, classifying the cause of the error, explaining the error, correcting the error, summarizing the error. In the practice of English teaching, these five steps are interrelated and supplement each other.
Conclusion
With the development of educational reform and the popularization of English education, college English teaching is facing great challenges. The English teaching circle has reached a consensus that the traditional teaching mode and examination mode cannot meet the needs of the society and students in the future, so the reform of college English teaching is imperative. Some advanced teaching methods, such as English-only teaching and communicative approach, have been widely used by English teachers nationwide, and students' participation in classroom teaching has greatly increased compared with the past. Under such circumstances, the number of mistakes made by students in class is much higher than before. The purpose of error analysis is not to completely avoid errors, but to minimize them on the premise of ensuring fluency. After all, the basic function of a language is communication, and fluent English with some mistakes is much better than stammering English with few or no mistakes that cannot be used in practical communication.
参考书目
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