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Abstract: With further reforms carried out in college English teaching to non-English majors, the compilation of college English course books is causing great concern among ad-ministrators, professionals, and teachers as well. The article makes a general analysis of the widely used”College English” Series (Integrated Course, new edition)”. Much is discussed about its guiding principles and theoretical bases, its framework and specific features. Written in accordance with the College English Syllabus (revised edition), this course book not only preserves the essence of traditional English language teaching and textbook writing, but also adopts the latest developments of theory and practice in foreign language teaching.
Key words: College English Syllabus, guiding principles, theoretical reading models,”College English” Series (Integrated Course), specific features
[CLC number] G423
[Document code] A
[Article ID] 1006-2831(2006)09-0035-6
1. Introduction
Choosing a course book plays an important role in the process of teaching and learning. It has particularly significant impacts on the ability of students to meet their language learning objectives, affects both the process of how they learn and the outcomes of their learning. College English is a required basic course for undergraduate non-English majors. According to the College English Syllabus (revised edition) (the Higher Education Ministry, 1999), College English as a systematic whole has as its main components knowledge and practical skills of the English language, learning strategies and intercultural communication. It takes theories of foreign language teaching as its guide and incorporates different teaching models and approaches. The objective of College English is to develop studentsability to use English in an all-round way, especially in listening and speaking. But we should note that in China, English is now taught as a foreign language, and in order to establish a solid foundation for better language use, top priority still needs to be given to reading and writing. In contrast to many traditional language syllabuses, the English course books published in recent years tend to have multi-dimensional syllabuses, like the “College English”Series (Integrated Course) (Li Yinhua, 2001)”. Though there exists something useful in the Grammar—Translation Method in language teaching, a communicative rather than structural pedagogical orientation is required for the fulfillment of objectives. So it is suggested that English teaching in China would be more balanced if attention is directed to both communicative functions and vocabulary and grammar learning in context.
2. Literature Background
In the traditional approach, the forms of language are the focus of language teaching. The structure of the course book is dictated by language form and sequence. The preoccupation with rules teaches students a lot about language at the expense of teaching language itself. As opposed to this, the current approaches to language teaching are communicative by nature. According to Richards and Rodgers (1986), there are three major elements of communicative language teaching: the communication principle, the task principle, and the meaningfulness principle. More details about CLT have been discussed and analyzed in the works by Widdowson (1978), Richards and Rodgers (1986), and Stern (1992).
Taking into account EFL in Chinese contexts, Li Guanyi (1989), known for EFL material development, began with a careful and detailed review of the traditional and communicative methods, followed by a comprehensive comparison of these two methods. She believes that these two methods could be complementary to each other in English teaching in China. In accordance with possible adjustments to make in foreign language teaching approaches, it implies that there is some need for a change of teaching and learning materials. But due to practical limitations, the development of English course books at different levels seems to have fallen behind.
3. Communicative Syllabus Design
The褻ollege EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) is characterized by its integrated syllabuses, that is, a combination of either two or three kinds of syllabuses.
In traditional language classes, courses are often segmented into separate language skills. Even worse, some skills like listening and speaking are totally neglected. However, there is a more recent trend toward skill integration (four skills identified as listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Take a reading course as an example. A course that deals with reading skills will also deal with related listening, speaking, and writing skills. A typical lesson in the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) includes: (1) a pre-reading discussion of the topic to activate schemata; (2) listening to informative statements about the topic of the text to be read; (3) a focus on a certain strategy, say, skimming; (4) a group discussion or class debate on a theme-related topic; (5) writing a summary of what has been read or discussed. This approaches to language learning models real-life integration of language skills for learners, and provides the teacher with a great deal of flexibility in creating interesting, motivating lessons. It is quite clear that integration of four skills is a plausible approach to take within a communicative, interactive framework. In designing activities, the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) applies these interactive and integrated-skills approaches.
Another obvious feature of the course book is the topic-based content. The”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) deals with topics of interests such as ROMANCE, ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE, EXTRATERRESTRIALS, CLONING, TERRORISM, GENERATION GAP, VALUES, WOMEN, HALF THE SKY, and PROTECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT. A topic-based or theme-based syllabus can serve the studentsvarious interests. In the classroom students read articles, view video programs, discuss issues, propose solutions, and carry out writing assignments on a given theme. The vocabulary and grammar to be learned are usually determined by the themes or topics. Such course books catch the curiosity and motivation of students with challenging topics and as they grapple with real-life issues, while improving their linguistic skills.
Language form is learned through language use. One of the distinctive features of practice in the”College EnglishSeries is the great emphasis laid upon task-based learning, which aims to increase studentsspeaking and writing abilities. In all units of series, the task-based approach is frequently adopted. Willis (2000) states, “For each topic or text, you can design tasks that your learners would find engaging to do themselves and that would generate the type of interaction they may need to take part in... Tasks can engage learners in listing, classifying, matching, comparing, problem-solving, sharing experiences, and anecdote telling. Some can have more creative goals, such as writing a story or designing traveling plans”. The activities that learners engage in outside of the classroom, for non-instructional purposes, are the ones used in class. Those activities or tasks are selected according to studentscognitive and linguistic readiness for particular tasks, their need for a particular discourse or interaction type, and availability of resources for carrying out the tasks. The theme-related tasks in the”College English” Series advise that students be allowed 3 to 5 minutes to prepare for a group discussion. Then the teacher and a student model the conversation in its early stages. While listening to the model text, students pay attention to vocabulary, grammar, and discourse. Next, students start their work in pairs.
4. Material Development
4.1 Reading Models Underlying the”College English” Series (Integrated Course, new edition)
4.1.1 Bottom-up Approach
Goodman (1967) states, “reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game”. It captures the spirit of the bottom-up process of decoding meaning from the printed page. Readers must first recognize a multiplicity of linguistic signals (letters, morphemes, syllables, words, phrases, grammatical cues, discourse markers). Then the reader selects from among all this information data that makes sense, that coheres, and that means something. All reading involves a risk—a guessing game, in Goodman’s words—because readers must, through this puzzle-solving process, infer meanings, decode what to retain and not to retain, and move on.
For L2 learners, broadening language knowledge is necessary. This is done through consciousness-raising exercises, highlighting frequently used language items to help learners perceive patterns and systematize what they know (Willis,2000). Vocabulary improvement is among what students want. Accordingly, the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) first puts emphasis on developing their lexical abilities through text-related activities. Then gradually, information-transfer tasks are introduced where they have to use words to construct meaning, productively as well as receptively. It has been proven that students could put their language acquisition to work in meaningful ways. In the”College EnglishSeries, we may find less used words which do not hinder understanding. Learners should be taught to use better strategies. A better strategy, here, is to skip over it and try to infer the meaning through its context unless a word is absolutely crucial to understanding. As to key words, techniques to be used for vocabulary analysis are as follows: (1) look for prefixes that may give clues; (2) look for suffixes that may indicate what part of speech it is; (3) look for grammatical contexts that may signal information; (4) look at semantic context (topic) for clues; (5)look for word association. In the”College EnglishSeriespractice activities, word formation is used; and discrimination of graphemes and orthographic patterns are pointed out; and confusable words are sorted out. When we come to grammar, learners are taught to recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (tense, agreement, verb forms, etc), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms. Also practiced are particular meanings that may be expressed in different grammatical forms. For concrete examples, we can refer to the use of sentence structure and sentence transformation that are arranged in each unit of the”College EnglishSeries. In communicative, authentic language activities in the classroom learners can indeed benefit from studying the fundamentals appropriate for each level.
4.1.2 Top-down Approach
Carrell and Eisterhold (1983) point out that schema theory holds that a text does not by itself carry meaning, but rather the reader brings information, knowledge, emotion, experience, and culture to the printed word. Skill in reading depends on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world. Schema theory emphasizes the other side of the reading process, the conceptual-driven, or top-down processing that brings background information into the decision about what something means.
Accordingly, learners are expected to develop reading strategies and use appropriate strategies flexibly. Some strategies are related to bottom-up procedures and others enhance the top-down processes. The first strategy to use is to identify the purpose in reading. By doing so, learners know what they are looking for and can skip potential distracting information. The second strategy is predicting from the content and cultural references such as graphics, titles, subtitles, editor’s notes, and other schemata. The third strategy is confirmation that is to check on the validity of their prediction. The fourth strategy is one that distinguishes between literal and implied meanings. This requires the application of sophisticated top-down processing skills. We know that not all language can be interpreted appropriately by attending to its literal, syntactic surface structure. Implied meaning usually has to be derived from processing pragmatic information. The fifth strategy is semantic mapping, or grouping ideas into meaningful clusters. Making such semantic maps can be done individually but they make for productive group work. Finally, the most valuable reading strategies are skimming and scanning. Skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the text, the main topic, and possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas. Scanning may ask learners to extract certain specific information (names or dates, a definition of a key concept, supporting details) without reading through the whole text.
By referring to the”College EnglishSeries, we find that pre-reading tasks are used to activate the readersexisting knowledge. It is supposed that the more shared assumptions (ideas, opinions) about certain things there are, the better the reading will be. And lead-in questions in the editor’s notes make learners guess what the following will discuss. Content questions check on a learnersunderstanding of the text. Skimming and scanning are most required here. Text organization gives learners a clear idea of how the text is developed. This kind of work can be done individually or collectively. It is intended for a holistic understanding of the text. In order to accurately assess the learnerscomprehension and their development of skills, learners are asked questions about the text’s main points, and summarize orally what is read. Moreover, the teacher encourages learners to make an outline or take notes on the text by themselves, and be engaged in peer or group negotiation for appropriate processing of information. Topics for discussion that designed in the”College EnglishSeries encourage learners to try out their opinions, reactions, and personal feelings by going beyond the text. With the use of natural, authentic language and tasks, some attention is given to bottom-up skills, but most attention is concentrated on top-down processing. We have noticed that mostly top-down processing emphasizes activation of schemata, understanding of the organization and purpose of the text. In related pieces of authentic material, learners are steered towards follow-up oral debates and writing activities concerning the main topic of the text.
4.1.3 Interactive Approach
It is safe to say that most newly published English reading course books adopt interactive reading models featuring the following: (1) processing stages tend to be parallel instead of being linear; (2) higher and lower processing stages interact with each other; (3) information contained in a higher stage may influence the processing of a lower stage; (4) both bottom-up and top-down processing are involved in reading; (5) more emphasis is placed on reader flexibility.
With insights from psycholinguistic and pedagogical practice, we are also aware of the great effect that culture may have on reading; the role that learners’cognition plays. In the classroom the teacher needs to use effective techniques for activating schemata, and teach learners to flexibly and effectively adopt reading strategies to tackle the text, and highlight relationships of reading to other skills, especially writing and speaking.
4.2 What is in the”College English” Series (Integrated Course, new edition)
The”College English” Series includes a durable “Student’s Book”, “Worksheets”, student’s disk, “Teacher’s Book”, and class video. Answer Keys and Transcripts are available in “Student’s Book . Each book consists of 8 themes within 8 units. The suggested time to complete each unit is limited to about 5 class periods. Every unit is made up of two main texts—Text A and Text B that are further divided into sub-sections. In Text A, the “Topic ” sub-section provides fluency type activities, drawing on studentsexperience or ideas of a particular topic. Activities are sequenced in order: (1) listening to recordings related to the topic; (2) brainstorming and reading; (3) pair work dealing with content questions; (4) group work and class discussion on the topic; (5) understanding the organization of the text. The anguage Focussub-section focuses on the structure or function of language raised in the “Topicsub-section. Activities are:(1) language sense enhancement; (2) vocabulary discovery and practice; (3) grammar discovery and practice. The ctivitysub-section provides a larger anguage producttask related to the theme. This consists of: (1) comprehensive exercise for completion of two gapped-passages, one being the summary of the “Text A , and the other being relevant to the theme; (2) translation of a short passage from Chinese to English with use of given words. The”Culture Matterssub-section provides information related to the theme. In the”College EnglishSeries, theme-related language learning tasks are usually in the form of group discussion as extended writing. Writing strategies are taught closely with it. The evision and Evaluationsub-section revises the language presented and evaluates the process of learning. In the”College EnglishSeries, self or peer evaluation is encouraged. Since Text B is mainly designed for home reading as a review, a small portion of class time is devoted for correction under the teacher’s guidance. In addition, learners have one self-test paper every 4 units to evaluate how well they are progressing. The course book maintains its continuity with a hemestructure. Both teachers and learners are expected to use the book in the order presented. It moves from simple to complex in terms of language structure. Students are exposed to a broad and varied selection of materials varying in styles, genres, either spoken or written. Input and output content is mainly based on cross-cultural topics, the latest information and ideas, or fiction.
We can see how the various sub-sections are distributed between the teacher and learners. This may provide conclusive feedback about teacher-learner roles, which can not be found in traditional course books. Characterized by the skill-based, topic-based and task-based content, the”College English”Series (Integrated Course, new edition)focuses on classroom processes and learner autonomy. Pair work, small-group activities, games and role-playing are often used. Hedge (2002) stated, 褹ny textbook is based on assumptions about learning, and the design of its activities implies certain roles for teachers and learners and assumes certain dispositions towards learning styles . Autonomous learning of students is deeply reinforced in the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated course, new edition).
5. Conclusion and Re-commendation
As a whole, the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) can be seen as a dynamic course book focused on learnersautonomous learning. Rather than teacher-centered, it requires individual and group responsibility from learners, and a high level of creativity and initiative from the teacher. Traditional teachersand learnersroles have been dramatically changed. But it never goes unnoticed that ample high-quality resources from the target language are available for learnersinput. Four language skills, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing are integrated. And self-test papers arranged every four units makes it easier to evaluate the learners' improvements in language proficiency.
Yet there is still room for further modification. According to my understanding, a few points need to be carefully reconsidered. First of all, the subdivisions of pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading phases arevague. It is believed that the first, second and third reading have different functions. The first reading of a text is to discover its main points and general organization. In the second reading, the focus is on particular sections to pick up specific details and development of the main points. The third reading is a critical reading, that is, a process of negotiation between the reader and the writer. Two or three quick, purposeful readings will be more efficient and productive than one slow, detailed reading. Although the pre-reading task—listening to recordings—provided in the”College EnglishSeries gives some clues for activating the learnersschemata, it is not enough. For example, other non-linguistic input (graphics, pictures, tables, charts, subtitles, etc) is lacking. Tasks involving little or no language output (drawing diagrams, flow charts, tables, etc) are not purposefully designed in accordance with the particular type of reading material. The result might be that learners tend to be heavily dependent on linguistic input. Thus, the information transfer strategy is, to a large extent, negatively affected.
Secondly, there is not much guidance for answering questions in the reading process. The functions or roles of questions at different stages of reading are neglected. It seems that more focus is on product of reading rather than the process. The text appears as a solid chunk without training readers to adopt ways of better reading that can be achieved. The whole cycle of prediction and confirmation is incomplete.
Thirdly, separate wordlists produce a less satisfactory effect. As compensation, key words, word phrases, and collocations should be boldfaced or italicized in the original text to encourage learners to guess word meanings without dictionary. Putting the words in context facilitates the studentsunderstanding of word meanings so they can be more easily taught.
Finally, the differences among written texts fail to be clearly identified. Each genre of written language has certain rules or conventions. Therefore, it is quite necessary to get learners familiarized with distinctive features of these genres and help them to develop strategies for extracting necessary meaning from each.
References
Carrell, P. & Eisterhold, J. Schema theory and ESL reading pedagogy. TESOL
Quarterly 17/4, 1983: 553-73.
Goodman, K. Reading: a psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the Reading
Specialist 6/4, 1967:126-35.
Hedge, T. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom[M]. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Richards, J. C. & Rodgers, T.Approaches and Methods in Language
Teaching: A Description and Analysis[M]. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986.
Stern, H. H. Issues and Options in Language Teaching[M]. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Widdowson, H. G. Teaching Language as Communication[M]. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1978.
Willis J. A Holistic Approach to Task-based Course Design. In JALT Special Issue
on Materials Design, K. Hill (ed.). The Japan Association for Language
Teaching, 2000.
教育部高等教育司. 大学英语教学大纲(修订本).上海外语教育出版社，1999.
李观仪. 传统教学法与交际教学法相结合可行乎？——高校英语专业基础阶段英语教学法之我见. 外语界，1989（1）.
李荫华. 大学英语（全新版）（1－4）. 上海外语教育出版社，2001.
Key words: College English Syllabus, guiding principles, theoretical reading models,”College English” Series (Integrated Course), specific features
[CLC number] G423
[Document code] A
[Article ID] 1006-2831(2006)09-0035-6
1. Introduction
Choosing a course book plays an important role in the process of teaching and learning. It has particularly significant impacts on the ability of students to meet their language learning objectives, affects both the process of how they learn and the outcomes of their learning. College English is a required basic course for undergraduate non-English majors. According to the College English Syllabus (revised edition) (the Higher Education Ministry, 1999), College English as a systematic whole has as its main components knowledge and practical skills of the English language, learning strategies and intercultural communication. It takes theories of foreign language teaching as its guide and incorporates different teaching models and approaches. The objective of College English is to develop studentsability to use English in an all-round way, especially in listening and speaking. But we should note that in China, English is now taught as a foreign language, and in order to establish a solid foundation for better language use, top priority still needs to be given to reading and writing. In contrast to many traditional language syllabuses, the English course books published in recent years tend to have multi-dimensional syllabuses, like the “College English”Series (Integrated Course) (Li Yinhua, 2001)”. Though there exists something useful in the Grammar—Translation Method in language teaching, a communicative rather than structural pedagogical orientation is required for the fulfillment of objectives. So it is suggested that English teaching in China would be more balanced if attention is directed to both communicative functions and vocabulary and grammar learning in context.
2. Literature Background
In the traditional approach, the forms of language are the focus of language teaching. The structure of the course book is dictated by language form and sequence. The preoccupation with rules teaches students a lot about language at the expense of teaching language itself. As opposed to this, the current approaches to language teaching are communicative by nature. According to Richards and Rodgers (1986), there are three major elements of communicative language teaching: the communication principle, the task principle, and the meaningfulness principle. More details about CLT have been discussed and analyzed in the works by Widdowson (1978), Richards and Rodgers (1986), and Stern (1992).
Taking into account EFL in Chinese contexts, Li Guanyi (1989), known for EFL material development, began with a careful and detailed review of the traditional and communicative methods, followed by a comprehensive comparison of these two methods. She believes that these two methods could be complementary to each other in English teaching in China. In accordance with possible adjustments to make in foreign language teaching approaches, it implies that there is some need for a change of teaching and learning materials. But due to practical limitations, the development of English course books at different levels seems to have fallen behind.
3. Communicative Syllabus Design
The褻ollege EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) is characterized by its integrated syllabuses, that is, a combination of either two or three kinds of syllabuses.
In traditional language classes, courses are often segmented into separate language skills. Even worse, some skills like listening and speaking are totally neglected. However, there is a more recent trend toward skill integration (four skills identified as listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Take a reading course as an example. A course that deals with reading skills will also deal with related listening, speaking, and writing skills. A typical lesson in the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) includes: (1) a pre-reading discussion of the topic to activate schemata; (2) listening to informative statements about the topic of the text to be read; (3) a focus on a certain strategy, say, skimming; (4) a group discussion or class debate on a theme-related topic; (5) writing a summary of what has been read or discussed. This approaches to language learning models real-life integration of language skills for learners, and provides the teacher with a great deal of flexibility in creating interesting, motivating lessons. It is quite clear that integration of four skills is a plausible approach to take within a communicative, interactive framework. In designing activities, the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) applies these interactive and integrated-skills approaches.
Another obvious feature of the course book is the topic-based content. The”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) deals with topics of interests such as ROMANCE, ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE, EXTRATERRESTRIALS, CLONING, TERRORISM, GENERATION GAP, VALUES, WOMEN, HALF THE SKY, and PROTECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT. A topic-based or theme-based syllabus can serve the studentsvarious interests. In the classroom students read articles, view video programs, discuss issues, propose solutions, and carry out writing assignments on a given theme. The vocabulary and grammar to be learned are usually determined by the themes or topics. Such course books catch the curiosity and motivation of students with challenging topics and as they grapple with real-life issues, while improving their linguistic skills.
Language form is learned through language use. One of the distinctive features of practice in the”College EnglishSeries is the great emphasis laid upon task-based learning, which aims to increase studentsspeaking and writing abilities. In all units of series, the task-based approach is frequently adopted. Willis (2000) states, “For each topic or text, you can design tasks that your learners would find engaging to do themselves and that would generate the type of interaction they may need to take part in... Tasks can engage learners in listing, classifying, matching, comparing, problem-solving, sharing experiences, and anecdote telling. Some can have more creative goals, such as writing a story or designing traveling plans”. The activities that learners engage in outside of the classroom, for non-instructional purposes, are the ones used in class. Those activities or tasks are selected according to studentscognitive and linguistic readiness for particular tasks, their need for a particular discourse or interaction type, and availability of resources for carrying out the tasks. The theme-related tasks in the”College English” Series advise that students be allowed 3 to 5 minutes to prepare for a group discussion. Then the teacher and a student model the conversation in its early stages. While listening to the model text, students pay attention to vocabulary, grammar, and discourse. Next, students start their work in pairs.
4. Material Development
4.1 Reading Models Underlying the”College English” Series (Integrated Course, new edition)
4.1.1 Bottom-up Approach
Goodman (1967) states, “reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game”. It captures the spirit of the bottom-up process of decoding meaning from the printed page. Readers must first recognize a multiplicity of linguistic signals (letters, morphemes, syllables, words, phrases, grammatical cues, discourse markers). Then the reader selects from among all this information data that makes sense, that coheres, and that means something. All reading involves a risk—a guessing game, in Goodman’s words—because readers must, through this puzzle-solving process, infer meanings, decode what to retain and not to retain, and move on.
For L2 learners, broadening language knowledge is necessary. This is done through consciousness-raising exercises, highlighting frequently used language items to help learners perceive patterns and systematize what they know (Willis,2000). Vocabulary improvement is among what students want. Accordingly, the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) first puts emphasis on developing their lexical abilities through text-related activities. Then gradually, information-transfer tasks are introduced where they have to use words to construct meaning, productively as well as receptively. It has been proven that students could put their language acquisition to work in meaningful ways. In the”College EnglishSeries, we may find less used words which do not hinder understanding. Learners should be taught to use better strategies. A better strategy, here, is to skip over it and try to infer the meaning through its context unless a word is absolutely crucial to understanding. As to key words, techniques to be used for vocabulary analysis are as follows: (1) look for prefixes that may give clues; (2) look for suffixes that may indicate what part of speech it is; (3) look for grammatical contexts that may signal information; (4) look at semantic context (topic) for clues; (5)look for word association. In the”College EnglishSeriespractice activities, word formation is used; and discrimination of graphemes and orthographic patterns are pointed out; and confusable words are sorted out. When we come to grammar, learners are taught to recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (tense, agreement, verb forms, etc), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms. Also practiced are particular meanings that may be expressed in different grammatical forms. For concrete examples, we can refer to the use of sentence structure and sentence transformation that are arranged in each unit of the”College EnglishSeries. In communicative, authentic language activities in the classroom learners can indeed benefit from studying the fundamentals appropriate for each level.
4.1.2 Top-down Approach
Carrell and Eisterhold (1983) point out that schema theory holds that a text does not by itself carry meaning, but rather the reader brings information, knowledge, emotion, experience, and culture to the printed word. Skill in reading depends on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world. Schema theory emphasizes the other side of the reading process, the conceptual-driven, or top-down processing that brings background information into the decision about what something means.
Accordingly, learners are expected to develop reading strategies and use appropriate strategies flexibly. Some strategies are related to bottom-up procedures and others enhance the top-down processes. The first strategy to use is to identify the purpose in reading. By doing so, learners know what they are looking for and can skip potential distracting information. The second strategy is predicting from the content and cultural references such as graphics, titles, subtitles, editor’s notes, and other schemata. The third strategy is confirmation that is to check on the validity of their prediction. The fourth strategy is one that distinguishes between literal and implied meanings. This requires the application of sophisticated top-down processing skills. We know that not all language can be interpreted appropriately by attending to its literal, syntactic surface structure. Implied meaning usually has to be derived from processing pragmatic information. The fifth strategy is semantic mapping, or grouping ideas into meaningful clusters. Making such semantic maps can be done individually but they make for productive group work. Finally, the most valuable reading strategies are skimming and scanning. Skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the text, the main topic, and possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas. Scanning may ask learners to extract certain specific information (names or dates, a definition of a key concept, supporting details) without reading through the whole text.
By referring to the”College EnglishSeries, we find that pre-reading tasks are used to activate the readersexisting knowledge. It is supposed that the more shared assumptions (ideas, opinions) about certain things there are, the better the reading will be. And lead-in questions in the editor’s notes make learners guess what the following will discuss. Content questions check on a learnersunderstanding of the text. Skimming and scanning are most required here. Text organization gives learners a clear idea of how the text is developed. This kind of work can be done individually or collectively. It is intended for a holistic understanding of the text. In order to accurately assess the learnerscomprehension and their development of skills, learners are asked questions about the text’s main points, and summarize orally what is read. Moreover, the teacher encourages learners to make an outline or take notes on the text by themselves, and be engaged in peer or group negotiation for appropriate processing of information. Topics for discussion that designed in the”College EnglishSeries encourage learners to try out their opinions, reactions, and personal feelings by going beyond the text. With the use of natural, authentic language and tasks, some attention is given to bottom-up skills, but most attention is concentrated on top-down processing. We have noticed that mostly top-down processing emphasizes activation of schemata, understanding of the organization and purpose of the text. In related pieces of authentic material, learners are steered towards follow-up oral debates and writing activities concerning the main topic of the text.
4.1.3 Interactive Approach
It is safe to say that most newly published English reading course books adopt interactive reading models featuring the following: (1) processing stages tend to be parallel instead of being linear; (2) higher and lower processing stages interact with each other; (3) information contained in a higher stage may influence the processing of a lower stage; (4) both bottom-up and top-down processing are involved in reading; (5) more emphasis is placed on reader flexibility.
With insights from psycholinguistic and pedagogical practice, we are also aware of the great effect that culture may have on reading; the role that learners’cognition plays. In the classroom the teacher needs to use effective techniques for activating schemata, and teach learners to flexibly and effectively adopt reading strategies to tackle the text, and highlight relationships of reading to other skills, especially writing and speaking.
4.2 What is in the”College English” Series (Integrated Course, new edition)
The”College English” Series includes a durable “Student’s Book”, “Worksheets”, student’s disk, “Teacher’s Book”, and class video. Answer Keys and Transcripts are available in “Student’s Book . Each book consists of 8 themes within 8 units. The suggested time to complete each unit is limited to about 5 class periods. Every unit is made up of two main texts—Text A and Text B that are further divided into sub-sections. In Text A, the “Topic ” sub-section provides fluency type activities, drawing on studentsexperience or ideas of a particular topic. Activities are sequenced in order: (1) listening to recordings related to the topic; (2) brainstorming and reading; (3) pair work dealing with content questions; (4) group work and class discussion on the topic; (5) understanding the organization of the text. The anguage Focussub-section focuses on the structure or function of language raised in the “Topicsub-section. Activities are:(1) language sense enhancement; (2) vocabulary discovery and practice; (3) grammar discovery and practice. The ctivitysub-section provides a larger anguage producttask related to the theme. This consists of: (1) comprehensive exercise for completion of two gapped-passages, one being the summary of the “Text A , and the other being relevant to the theme; (2) translation of a short passage from Chinese to English with use of given words. The”Culture Matterssub-section provides information related to the theme. In the”College EnglishSeries, theme-related language learning tasks are usually in the form of group discussion as extended writing. Writing strategies are taught closely with it. The evision and Evaluationsub-section revises the language presented and evaluates the process of learning. In the”College EnglishSeries, self or peer evaluation is encouraged. Since Text B is mainly designed for home reading as a review, a small portion of class time is devoted for correction under the teacher’s guidance. In addition, learners have one self-test paper every 4 units to evaluate how well they are progressing. The course book maintains its continuity with a hemestructure. Both teachers and learners are expected to use the book in the order presented. It moves from simple to complex in terms of language structure. Students are exposed to a broad and varied selection of materials varying in styles, genres, either spoken or written. Input and output content is mainly based on cross-cultural topics, the latest information and ideas, or fiction.
We can see how the various sub-sections are distributed between the teacher and learners. This may provide conclusive feedback about teacher-learner roles, which can not be found in traditional course books. Characterized by the skill-based, topic-based and task-based content, the”College English”Series (Integrated Course, new edition)focuses on classroom processes and learner autonomy. Pair work, small-group activities, games and role-playing are often used. Hedge (2002) stated, 褹ny textbook is based on assumptions about learning, and the design of its activities implies certain roles for teachers and learners and assumes certain dispositions towards learning styles . Autonomous learning of students is deeply reinforced in the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated course, new edition).
5. Conclusion and Re-commendation
As a whole, the”College EnglishSeries (Integrated Course, new edition) can be seen as a dynamic course book focused on learnersautonomous learning. Rather than teacher-centered, it requires individual and group responsibility from learners, and a high level of creativity and initiative from the teacher. Traditional teachersand learnersroles have been dramatically changed. But it never goes unnoticed that ample high-quality resources from the target language are available for learnersinput. Four language skills, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing are integrated. And self-test papers arranged every four units makes it easier to evaluate the learners' improvements in language proficiency.
Yet there is still room for further modification. According to my understanding, a few points need to be carefully reconsidered. First of all, the subdivisions of pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading phases arevague. It is believed that the first, second and third reading have different functions. The first reading of a text is to discover its main points and general organization. In the second reading, the focus is on particular sections to pick up specific details and development of the main points. The third reading is a critical reading, that is, a process of negotiation between the reader and the writer. Two or three quick, purposeful readings will be more efficient and productive than one slow, detailed reading. Although the pre-reading task—listening to recordings—provided in the”College EnglishSeries gives some clues for activating the learnersschemata, it is not enough. For example, other non-linguistic input (graphics, pictures, tables, charts, subtitles, etc) is lacking. Tasks involving little or no language output (drawing diagrams, flow charts, tables, etc) are not purposefully designed in accordance with the particular type of reading material. The result might be that learners tend to be heavily dependent on linguistic input. Thus, the information transfer strategy is, to a large extent, negatively affected.
Secondly, there is not much guidance for answering questions in the reading process. The functions or roles of questions at different stages of reading are neglected. It seems that more focus is on product of reading rather than the process. The text appears as a solid chunk without training readers to adopt ways of better reading that can be achieved. The whole cycle of prediction and confirmation is incomplete.
Thirdly, separate wordlists produce a less satisfactory effect. As compensation, key words, word phrases, and collocations should be boldfaced or italicized in the original text to encourage learners to guess word meanings without dictionary. Putting the words in context facilitates the studentsunderstanding of word meanings so they can be more easily taught.
Finally, the differences among written texts fail to be clearly identified. Each genre of written language has certain rules or conventions. Therefore, it is quite necessary to get learners familiarized with distinctive features of these genres and help them to develop strategies for extracting necessary meaning from each.
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