Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
About 500 years ago, the dominant language of the Western world in the field of education, business, religion, government and other fields, was undoubtedly Latin. However, since the 16th century, due to the political changes occurring in Europe, French, Italian, English and other modern language had become increasingly important, as the Latin language, either in oral and/or communication was gradually being replaced[1]. In present, English language has evolved into one of the most important international languages, and has become a global common language. Even although English is inferior to Chinese in the number of users, but it is the world's most widely-used languages, and also is the first-choice foreign language studied and researched in our country [2]. In order to improve the effectiveness of foreign language teaching, people have been tirelessly exploring effective ways and a variety of teaching methods emerged [3]. What firstly appeared was the grammar-translation method, mainly used for teaching Latin. Even after English gradually replaced Latin’s status, the newer popular language’s teaching still followed the traditional grammar-translation method. Due to the need for international exchanges, cultivating language learners’ oral expression skills had becoming increasingly important, resulting in a Direct Method flowering, which improve listening and speaking ability to a certain degree. Respectively, around the World War II there have been Oral and Situational Language Teaching methods and Audiolingual Method in the United Kingdom and the United States. Although the names of these two teaching methods vary, they both adopted mechanically drilling sentence as the main training method, which emphasized on cultivating students' listening and speaking ability. The 1970s can be described as 'a method of prosperity' era, with the emergence of a wide variety of teaching methods, such as the total physical response, the collective language learning, silent way, Suggestopedia and so on. Although the effects were difficult to determine, at least it reflected a sustained exploration on methods. In the early 1980s, the communicative approach became popular, focusing on reading, oral and written comprehensive skills training, especially about exchanges and commun，英语论文网站，英语论文范文 |
