چکیده:
This paper presents an eclectic model of teaching English majors the Comprehensive English course at the university level. The new approach to ELT described
combines strengths from the traditional teaching, communicative language teaching (CLT)
and the context approach (CA) (Bax, 2003) in order to suit the current English as a foreign
language (EFL) at the university level. It consists of three interrelated stages in teaching
English majors the Comprehensive English course: pre-reading, while-reading and postreading,
and each stage focuses on different and specific dimensions. The new approach
treats language teaching and learning as an organic process and includes reading at the
syntactical level (bottom-up stage) and reading at the textual and discourse level (top-down
stage). The top-down stage is more significant in language teaching because it is this stage
that enables the progression of a synthesized approach to take place. The proposed eclectic
model is different from traditional teacher-centred practices in which teachers tend to treat
new words, phrases and sentence structure patterns as discrete language points and elaborate
upon them over-meticulously while the gist of the text is usually overlooked. Furthermore, the
proposed approach is aimed at helping teachers to overcome the weakness of teachercenteredness.
In this eclectic approach, the prevalent methods of teaching comprehensive
courses are the starting point and CLT and CA are employed to complement them. The
purpose for such a synthesis is to cultivate learners‟ communicative competence as required
by the revised curriculum for English majors at the university level.
Introduction: Since the late 1980s there has been a top-down movement to reform English
language teaching (ELT) in many countries An important component of English language
teaching reform has been an effort to import communicative language teaching (CLT). (Hu,
2002). However, attempts to introduce CLT into ELT in teaching have provoked a great deal
of comment and debate. Whereas some researchers have emphasized the value of adopting
CLT teaching (Li, 1984; Maley, 1984; Xiao, 2005), others have noted the importance of
Chinese traditional ways of teaching and learning (Harvey, 1985; Sampson, 1984; Sano et al.,
1984). Still many researchers have focused on the need to adapt CLT to the demands and
conditions for ELT in China (Anderson, 1993; Rao, 1996, 2002; Xiao, 2005, 2006a). Within
this debate on English teaching methodology, the study of Chinese students‟ perceptions and
attitudes to CLT deserves particular attention. Some earlier studies show that Chinese
students are inclined to prefer a pleasant mixture of classroom-based learning activities that
emphasize both communicative components of CLT and formal grammatical correctness of
the traditional approach (Rao, 2002; Xiao, 2005, 2006). Therefore, an eclectic approach which
can combine the strengths of different approaches .EFL learners‟ needs is necessary.