Instructional design is an important part for College English teaching, which directly affects the quality of college English teaching. The instructional design can improve students’ initiative and the teaching effect. This paper expounds the importance of instructional design in college English teaching, analyzes the problems existing in College English instructional design, and puts forward some suggestions: strengthening the systematic instruction of instructional design theory, emphasizing the teaching objectives and students’ needs, optimizing the structure and content of the design, and doing the good system convergence.
Key words: instructional design; college English teaching; application.
Introduction
From the point of view of instructional design, the teaching of college English based on the comprehensive English course is divided into two kinds of situations. The first fails to recognize the importance of instructional design, thinking that as long as teachers are aware of the teaching content and pay attention to making appropriate interaction with students, they can teach a good lesson. The second is that people thinks that the character of electron and steps of the teaching material content is all of the instructional design, disregarding the programmatic document or the demand of social development that puts forward higher and more urgent requirements for the cultivation of talents in university education. In this case, the quality and efficiency of college English teaching must be improved. This paper expounds the necessity of instructional design in college English teaching, and gives the corresponding countermeasures according to the existing problems in college English teaching, so as to improve the instructional design of College English.
The Importance of Instructional Design in College English Teaching
The definition of instructional design is that educational practice workers use systematic point of views and methods to follow the basic rules of the teaching process, system planning, safety and decision-making based on various learning and teaching theory according to the characteristics of teaching objects and their teaching ideas, style. Its importance is mainly reflected in:
Instructional Design is the Bridge and Link of Theory and Practice of College English Teaching and Learning
Teaching theory reveals the objective laws of education and teaching, as well as provides guiding methods of “teaching”, including teaching purposes, methods, principles, content, process, effect assessment, etc. The learning theory is the exploration results according to students’ psychological and other internal factors. The meaning of putting teaching and learning method into the application of English teaching practice refers to the process where the principle of learning theory and teaching theory are changed into teaching materials and teaching activities by the use of systematic methods.
Instructional design is a Systematic Process which can Predict and Analyze the Possible Problems in the Teaching Process, and Find Solution Reasonable, Targeted and Feasible
Instructional design, which takes the satisfaction of students’ needs as the purpose, should first make analysis of demands and teaching targets. Second, the teaching plans should be designed and developed on the basis of integrating teaching resource. Finally, evaluation should be made and added in the process of teaching practice. As a systematic task, instructional design can make the educators have a macro control of the teaching process, make a comprehensive analysis and solve the possible problems, finally improve the teaching practice.
Instructional Design is a Process with Rich Content Reflecting the Individuation
Instructional design has the obvious feature of purpose, pertinence and feasibility, which has the guiding role in teaching process. The content of instructional design covers various elements of teaching process through all the teaching practice. Both the teaching process and effect evaluation are in accordance with the requirements of the teaching objectives and the guidance, which represents its nature of purpose. The implementation of the teaching content needs to meet the needs of the main body, which represents its nature of pertinence. Instructional design must meet the need of teaching practice, which represents its nature of feasibility. The whole instructional design system to achieve the full realization of specific teaching practice has important guidance and reference value. At the same time, because of the different teaching objectives and subjects, the realization of the teaching process presents different states and characteristics, which reflects the characteristics of the individual.
Problems in College English Instructional Design
With the combination of modern information technology and English teaching, the instructional design plays an increasingly important role in English teaching. But at this stage, because of the lack of the concept and theory of the instructional design, its specific application level is limited. The main problems in the process of College English teaching are as follows:
Because of the Traditional Teaching Mode, the Instructional Design Lacks Theoretical Knowledge
As a public foundation course, the status of College English in subject teaching has decreased compared to high school, which leads to a large extent relaxation of the ideas of the educators and the educated. College English teaching basically followed the traditional high school education, the ideas and methods of the instructional design is rarely innovation and College English teaching presents the status of following traditional teaching. In the problems presented by the National English teaching and learning, a large part of it is related to instructional design, which reflects that the theory and practice of instructional design needs to be further improved.
Emphasis on the Form, not Closely Related to the Combination of the Teaching Objectives and Students’ Needs
With the deepening of the curriculum reform, the new teaching idea has caused a great impact on traditional experience of teachers. The teaching goal of the three of knowledge and skill, process and method, emotion and attitude bring more difficulties to the instructional design of College English, many teachers attend to one thing and neglect another in specific design. For example, in order to achieve the goal of emotion and attitude, in order to make the classroom atmosphere more active, many English teachers add story situation and background activities to the curriculum design. But too many emotional activities will make the students neglect the curriculum itself, resulting in the deficiency of critical thinking training.
The Structure of Instructional Design is Loose, Teaching Focus is not Clear
Compared with the basic English teaching in high school, College English teaching should pay more attention to the cultivation and improvement of the students’ ability. Therefore, the structure of the instructional design should be more compact and reflect the difficulty of the gradient change, which is still insufficient in the practical instructional design. College English instructional design should be clear about the key and difficult points in teaching so that students can learn by themselves based on their own practical learning and supplement in the classroom teaching. At the same time, the prominent difficulty of the teaching content has also made the primary and secondary changes in the teaching content, also adjust the overall learning rhythm, and mobilize the enthusiasm of students learning as well.
Suggestions for Optimizing College English Instructional design
To a large extent, the success or failure of the instructional design is related to the whole teaching practice. In order to make college English teaching more vivid and efficient, people should start from improving the instructional design. In view of the existing problems and shortcomings in the current college English instructional design, people should take active and effective measures to solve the problems. The optimization suggestions includes: strengthening the instructional design theory of system guidance, paying attention to the teaching objectives and students needs, optimizing the structure and content of the design, and doing a good job of the system convergence.
Strengthen the Instructional Design Theory of the System Guidance
College English educators should continue to learn advanced instructional design concept. On the one hand, guide the specific teaching practice with the systematic instructional design theory, so as to make teaching activities orderly and efficient. On the other hand, people should continue to test and improve the theory in the practice of English teaching to explore the instructional design for English teaching process.
Pay Attention to the Teaching Objectives and Students’ Needs
English teaching at the university stage should take the “ability and quality improvement” as the goal, and finish instructional design combined with the characteristics and needs of students’ physical and mental development. English learning is to be used in the foreign exchange, therefore, College English teaching should strengthen the cultivation of cultural knowledge and language application ability in combination with the teaching of basic knowledge. Instructional design should adapt to social development, add new contents of the time according to the characteristics of college students’ active and creative thinking. Besides that, they should also add novel and unique content into the design process, for example, teach students in the “student teaching” way, so as to mobilize students’ enthusiasm and creativity.
Optimize the Structure and Content of the Instructional Design
Reasonable and orderly instructional design structure and rich content can make English teaching more vivid and efficient. Teachers must have a clear understanding of the teaching objectives in the specific design process, highlighting the different characteristics of college English teaching contents, such as the different requirements and objectives of listening courses, writing courses and reading courses for students. In addition to that, the teachers should try to reconcile the content of teaching according to the students’ different need levels, so as to meet the maximum needs, for example, the layout of the homework can set more than one topic for students to choose. At the same time, the study and evaluation of teaching effect can also break through the traditional examination mode. In short, teachers should make full use of the existing teaching resources and means to enrich the instructional design and content to mobilize the students to carry out autonomous learning.
Do a Good Convergence Job
College English instructional design should do a convergence job, the first is to do with the English curriculum in high school. This connection is not a simple continuation and repetition, but the breakthrough and innovation in the content and form. To break the changeless learning model of “words, texts, exercises” in the high school stage, teachers must enrich the teaching activities combining with the advanced equipment, such as multimedia. Secondly, make good connection of the students’ psychological development needs, change the students from the passive recipients of teaching activities to the active participants, so that they can enjoy the freedom and fun of learning. At the same time, teachers should also do a good connection job of learning and application of cohesion. English learning is used to practice, therefore they must take into account the needs of the society and students in the future work, put more application-oriented knowledge in the traditional textbooks.
Conclusion
The teaching process of College English should pay attention to and strengthen the role of instructional design, namely, take students as the center, while teaching as the main body, make the improvement of the quality of English teaching and students’ quality and ability as the goal, and explore new ideas and methods of instructional design. The teachers should dare to break the routine, play the important role of modern information technology based on the traditional teaching mode, and make the instructional design innovative as well. To make good connection of the teaching content and form of the connection between the high school curriculum and university curriculum, teachers need to promote the development of English teaching process through systematic instructional design.
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