The Construction of College English High-quality Courses in the Post-epidemic Period

Tianjin University Renai College,Tianjin,China Email:panheabc@126.com

[Abstract]During the COVID-19 quarantine period,an unprecedented large-scaled online teaching has given teachers in higher education deeper insights into the teaching and learning from a new perspective.In the post-epidemic period,how to adapt to the new forms of education and how to construct high-quality courses in college English teaching is an important task that English teachers are confronted with.This paper analyzes the necessity of the construction of college English high-quality courses and then presents several principles and specific measures on how to construct high-quality courses in the post-epidemic period in order to provide references for college English teaching.

[Keywords]college English;high-quality courses;effective teaching;post-epidemic period

Introduction

College English is an indispensable part of higher education.The aim of college English teaching is to cultivate students’English application competence,enhance their cross cultural communication as well as develop their independent learning and improve their comprehensive cultural literacy so that they can apply English effectively in their study,social communications and future work in order to meet the requirements of the country and personal development.From the perspective of college English curriculum and teaching objectives,college English goes far beyond imparting English language skills,but it goes further to have a richer connotation and more important mission in the comprehensive development of students.Therefore,college English teaching should combine English language learning with the cultivation of students’comprehensive attainment,and integrate socialist core values into college English teaching so as to cultivate students’comprehensive abilities to solve complex problems and enhance their advanced thinking competence.

Since February,2020,in order to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on college opening and classroom teaching,teachers and students have taken advantage of the online virtual classroom to carry out online teaching and learning.An unprecedented large-scaled teaching reform has taken place and it has an effect that changes the way both what teachers teach and what students learn.In the post-epidemic period,how to adapt the new form of education would be an important task for teachers and students in higher education to think and put into practice.The construction of high-quality courses is indeed a down-to-earth new requirement from the country for higher education in major construction and curriculum setting.(Cai,2018)

The construction of college English high-quality courses should go along with the highly developed information age in order to achieve the integration of language learning and new knowledge learning.In high-quality English courses,teachers’classroom instruction,teaching contents,ways and evaluation of teaching should properly meet students’learning requirements.Therefore,the teaching design of an high-quality lesson should satisfy the following principles:the first is the effective participation of students that is to stimulate and maintain students’learning motivation to think critically; the second is to focus on the teaching contents so as to be teaching objectives oriented and dynamically modified according to different target students;the third one is to explore diversified teaching and learning ways in class.

The Necessity of the Construction of College English High-quality Courses

The Ministry of Education proposed that the courses against the conscience should be suspended and low-quality courses should be eliminated to create high-quality courses with innovation and challenge.(Wu,2018)Confronted with the rapid development of the country and the whole society and the increasing internationalization of higher education,the current college English curriculum still has several major problems which need to be solved urgently.

The Backwardness of Teaching Objectives and Contents

A set of fixed textbooks used in college English teaching may ignore the needs of different students with different English competency.It must be acknowledged that there are distances between the contents of various courses and the standards of the high-quality courses characterized with high-level,innovative and challenging.Some out of date teaching contents do not match the cognitive structure and knowledge framework of today’s college students and then leads to students’weaker study motivation.Influenced by the thought of exam-oriented education,the classroom instruction still focuses on pure teaching of language skills by explanation,which fails to concentrate on the cultivation of students’comprehensive language application ability.As a result,students pour large amount of time and energy in English learning,yet they can still not be able to speak fluent English and acquire the ability to communicate with others and spread Chinese culture outside.Some contents of college English textbooks are out of date and some are a repetition with the high school contents,which furthermore blocks students’interest in it.College teachers must examine their own courses in the needs of the new era and work hard to build high-quality courses.

Less-diversified Way of Teaching Leading to Unsatisfactory Effect

Generally,big class learning is a common way under the background of the popularization of higher education.In this case,not only teachers find it difficult to organize the class,but the students also find it hard to concentrate their minds in such a big class.As it is known to all,language learning needs communication between teacher and students or exchanges among students themselves.However,in big class learning environment,effective communication cannot be virtually organized,so students lose the opportunity to communicate with the teacher and their classmates in class.In addition,some teachers employ Power Point in class by simply reading the contents written on the slides instead of leading students to think deeply.All that students have to do is to listen,understand and memorize passively with no chance to analyze,evaluate and exchange with their classmates.As a result,students are passive in taking class and low in learning efficiency.Student-centered way of learning may become a slogan but a really effective way of teaching mode.

Less Scientific Evaluation System

Evaluation and examination are important parts in college English teaching and they are also important tools to test teaching quality and promote curriculum development.However,some colleges still follow the traditional assessment mode which takes the final examination as the standard for assessment.The traditional assessment mode does not take students’applied ability and interpersonal competence into consideration,and it lacks management and monitoring to the overall learning process of students.What’s more,in practical assessment,there is a lot of less scientific aspects,such as the given examination syllabus beforehand and the increased grade in usual performance.Along with the changing of times,the former assessment mode cannot adapt to the request of the current age.

Construction of College English High-quality Courses

With all the above problems existed in current college English teaching concerned,there should be a change in the teaching mode in order to improve the current situation and motivate both the teacher and the students’passion in English learning.

High-quality courses mean a way of effective teaching mode in which teachers should follow the principles of teaching activities by using less time and energy to obtain more effective teaching with all the teaching objectives achieved and better cultivation of students’overall development.Generally speaking,there are three aspects in effective teaching,the first being the consistence of the result of teaching activities with the expected teaching objectives,the second being less investment of time and energy in exchange for a better learning effect,and the third being the profit of teaching activities and the realization of teaching values.Effective teaching is a new teaching concept which teachers and students should pursue for a long term.(Yang,2015)The process of education is the process of students’actual learning and effective teaching focuses on whether students’learning happens or being effective.Therefore,effective teaching is a modern educational concept to improve teachers’work efficiency and strengthen process assessment and objective management.As long as the students benefit from learning and make as much progresses as they should,effective teaching happens.

Classroom teaching is a bilateral activity between teachers and students with a strong purpose.Only if the teacher’leading role and students’dominant role are tightly integrated can better teaching effect be achieved in class.In the following,the author interprets the strategies to construct high-quality courses from four aspects:

Changing Teaching Concept and Reforming Teaching Mode

College English seems to have no direct relation with the construction of engineering or science majors superficially.However,only facing the international world will a discipline has opportunities to strive to be a first-class discipline.It will be possible for a technological industry with international competitive power and international right of speech.From this aspect,college English is closely related with other disciplines in higher education.Thus,college English teachers take responsibility for cultivating college students to acquire professional international frontier information and the ability to communicate scientific findings in English.For all the above reasons,college English education has been taken as an important part in national strategy.Therefore,it is necessary to change the current out of date teaching concept and reform the present teaching mode.

With regard to teaching concept,teachers should pay attention to leading and inspiring students to express themselves.Each period of college English courses should be given a specific teaching objective and encourage students to think critically and complete creative work in class.As for teaching mode,student-centered teaching mode should be applied in college English teaching in order to encourage students to explore language skills.(Chen,2016)In class,teachers should lay emphasis on cultivating students’ability to raise questions and solve problems in English,especially their critical thinking skills and intercultural communication competence.

From the perspective of teaching content,classroom teaching cannot be limited in the present textbooks.Teachers should use textbooks creatively,make necessary supplements,and raise higher level questions in order for the students to broaden their minds and apply the knowledge they have learnt.Before class,teachers ought to design and enrich the teaching contents to be more interesting and challenging.In addition,up to date materials should be added into teaching contents and more challenging courses should be designed to promote students’language skills,cultivate their humanistic quality,broaden their international insight and enhance their speculative consciousness.Therefore,college English teaching will become really profound,demanding and challenging.

Stimulating Students’Motivation and Passion for Study

Classroom teaching should attach importance to cultivate students’interest and confidence as well as stimulate their motivation and passion for study.Meanwhile,teachers ought to use vivid,lively and humorous way to encourage students participate in the teaching activities in class so as to attract students to listen attentively and study actively.Thus,students can be fully engaged in study and have fun in learning.As a result,students’enthusiasm in learning is motivated and they will be eager to learn English actively and passionately.A study no longer oriented by exams is an actual study and it is what education really is because education is the kindling of a flame,but not the filling of a vessel.The art of teaching lies in arousing students’interest.With interest,students are willing to take classes wholeheartedly.Students’initiative and enthusiasm are the keys in effective teaching.

In class,teachers can design some real situation to provide ample examples for language learning.The vivid and lively situations provided will help students apply the language they have learnt into real situations,which will speed up the learning process and acquisition process.

The rapid development of information technology and the application of internet lays solid foundation for the construction of college English high-quality courses.Students in the new era are so inclined to get access to the up to date materials and the internet provides opportunity for abundant update materials.Also,teachers can take advantage of the internet to choose materials which are relevant to the teaching contents on the textbook and then take those materials to be beneficial supplement to the teaching.

College English differs from other disciplines in the fact that both language and contents need to be learnt.However,there is a gap between language study and contents study.For undergraduate students,what they learn in English class is only the basic language skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing,most of which are simple repetitions of high school language points.For college students,they had better study something relevant with their own major to increase relevant professional knowledge.High-quality college English courses should combine English language study and study of new theory,new knowledge and new technology,which can challenge students’knowledge structure and language competence.

In the present society,the cultivation of students’ability to raise questions and solve problems,and the cultivation of students’critical thinking ability and their scientific attainment is more important than grammar explanation and test-oriented training.Therefore,it is necessary to increase student’cognitive challenge so as to stimulate their motivation and passion for study.

Construction of Intelligent Learning Environment

Effective classroom teaching is the key to construct college English high-quality courses.In order to achieve this goal,student-centered teaching mode which lay emphasis on students’dominant role in teaching is highly required.Students should become the active learner,independent knowledge constructor,enthusiastic discover and determined explorer.At the same time,teachers should adopt various teaching methods to enhance teacher-students communication and combine online and offline teaching to stimulate students learning passion and motivation so as to improve the overall teaching effect.

Before class,teachers could post clear tasks online and organize students to take full advantage of the online materials to preview basic knowledge independently.Students could have a clear understanding of the following learning process and make clear their own tasks and then further finish what the teacher ask them to preview.In class,teacher’s focus could be changed to train and lead students’practical knowledge through different activities such as group discussions,presentations,peer assessment or question and answers.The construction of highly interactive learning situations will benefit students’language output abilities especially their speaking and writing abilities.Hence,students’comprehensive abilities will be enhanced and improved.In-depth study is a critical step to promote students’higher level cognition and thinking as well as an indispensable part to improve students’knowledge system.Students’learning passion will be greatly triggered through interesting and challenging study tasks.Meanwhile,teachers could guide students to think,analyze and explore the best way to solve problems so as to stimulate students creative thinking,enhance their driving force of independent learning,and improve teaching quality effectively.Immediate and appropriate encouragement will help students have strong interests in learning,keep confidence in study and make greater progress.After class,teachers could have a clear understanding of students’study by using WeChat,QQ and some other online applications and teachers could solve students’problems any time anywhere so as to help students review what they have learnt.Homework is an important way to review and an important premise to know the new.Teachers assign well-designed homework according to students’ability and interests.Students will improve their comprehensive competence by finishing the homework.

Compared with traditional teaching,the blended teaching mode which combines online and offline teaching could take good advantage of the modern technology to make effective teaching and learning happen.(He,2015)The technology is not purely single learning tool or a certain teaching platform,but the intelligent learning environment which puts together online learning platform,situational learning materials,cognitive processing and knowledge construction both online and offline.The intelligent learning environment is student-centered in which students’experience of learning could be enhanced and their deep learning could be promoted.

Setting up Scientific Evaluation System

It is important to set up diversified evaluating systems to cover each part of college English curriculum.The adoption of diversified evaluating methods and the combination of final evaluation and process will help teachers obtain quality feedback immediately and improve their teaching management.From the students’perspective,they could modify their learning strategy in time and improve their learning methods.The evaluation is comprehensively appraised based on a student’s result of daily attendance,classroom performance,homework,quizzes and final examination.The evaluating content includes not only assessment to basic language points but also comprehensive abilities of listening,speaking,reading,writing and translation.If possible,teachers could create electronic files for students to record their learning process.

Conclusion

In post-epidemic period,the primary task for college English teachers is to construct high-quality English courses.The Ministry of Education has published several documents to gradually implement high-quality courses nationwide.The essence of high-quality courses is to make the courses keep pace with the highly developed times and meet the needs of the nation and the development of students.(Chen,2019)College English teachers ought to take a good look at the present courses and adopt the high-quality standard in teaching in order to be a qualified educator.

The highly developed information age brings both challenges and opportunities to college English teaching.Not only college teachers but also undergraduate students ought to adjust themselves to the new trend and take good advantage of the modern technology in teaching and learning.By using the modern technological tools in teaching,teachers and students could obtain access to the intelligent teaching and learning environment.As a result,both teaching and learning would become efficiently and effective.

The aim of college teaching is to develop student’s comprehensive English application ability.In order to achieve this goal,the traditional teaching concept should have a dramatic change,the teaching mode should have a better reform,students’motivation and passion for study should be strongly stimulated,intelligent learning environment should be solidly constructed,and evaluation system should be scientifically set up.In addition,the construction of high-quality courses provides new concept and direction to the development of higher education.As college English teachers,we need to keep pace with the contemporary times and make constant efforts to construct highquality English courses.