The word “bilingual” may refer to a person who knows and uses two languages or a course or educational program that uses two languages when providing instruction or a country in which more than one language is spoken by its citizens.” [4] Bilingual education is defined in Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics as “the use of a second or foreign language in school for the teaching of content subjects”. [5] Bilingual education looks like a simple label, but it is associated with a variety of models within different contexts.
Take bilingual education in USA as an example, the traditional bilingual education program generally target at those immigrants. The children of immigrants might be taught in their mother tongue at the very beginning and gradually be immersed in English (the dominant language) until they reach the certain level. While in the Canadian immersion language program, most language (English) learners achieve their second language (French) improvement by studying their subject matters in French.
In China, the present situation of bilingual education is different from that in the USA or Canada: bilingual education is carried out all through the country to ensure an increasing number of Chinese people to have the ability of using English, which also differs from the bilingual education in the schools of minorities because of the different target languages.
The purpose of bilingual education is acquiring subject knowledge and the improvement of the English proficiency. The bilingual teaching subject course may be established both to instruct the students’ subject knowledge and to develop their second language proficiency.
The bilingual education is effective in the development of the second language because it creates a language environment for the learner to get the second language input. To make the acquisition take place, the learner needs both sufficient “comprehensible input” and time to regard the new language “appropriate”. “When the conditions are met, the learner will develop an intuitive sense that the language sounds right or looks right even if he or she cannot remember the formal rules that govern the language.” [1] The exposure to the second language comes primarily from the classroom. According to Krashen, comprehensible input can be provided in a variety of settings including the language class, the natural setting or in a subject-matter course. In the review of the success of the Canadian immersion language program, Krashen praises that the immersion provides the learner with a great deal of comprehensible input. The subject-matter class may be better than the language class for the students to get comprehensible input, because in the subject-matter class, the topic is automatically provided to the teacher and the students’ focus is shifted on the message rather than the language form. Therefore to provide comprehensible input in the bilingual classroom, the lecturer should organize clear explanations with appropriate target language in a way that the students can understand.
In conclusion, as the investigation in teacher talk can provide us with a view on the process of teaching and learning, it is helpful to carry out a study on teacher talk in the bilingual teaching class.
2 Survey of teacher talk in college bilingual teaching
According to the important of the teacher talk in college bilingual teaching classroom, author carried out a survey in university to find the present problems of teacher talk in college bilingual classroom and to find the appropriate improvements.
2. 1 Background of survey
With the advocate of the National Education Ministry of carrying out bilingual teaching in the subject courses and enabling the students to improve their English proficiency through subjects learning, Hunan Agriculture University has established several bilingual teaching classes in different colleges for about four years. The Colleges, such as Business College, Economical College, and Engineering College etc. all carried out the bilingual courses. Take the Business College for example, the bilingual course including Business English, Quality Management, Animal Medicine Science, International Settlement etc. Some original subject books from western countries are introduced to students as their textbook. Moreover, most of the courses are compulsory and the students are required to pass the final examination in Chinese and English mixed.
However, the effect of bilingual courses is not as satisfactory to both the teachers and students as they expected. There are complaints from some students such as that the bilingual teaching impedes their understanding of subject knowledge, and the teachers’ spoken English is not so correct that sometimes misleads them. Also some teachers complain that bilingual teaching is not quite easy to handle and gives them more burden, and it is not so effective as expected.
2. 2 Participants of survey
In view of the above discussion, the author makes a questionnaire to find out the present situation of teacher talk in the college bilingual teaching classroom. The author carried out a questionnaire in Hunan Agriculture University, and randomly selected 100 juniors in Business College whose CET pass rate is 40.1 percent.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
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