Question1: In your opinion, what kind of classroom teaching activity conforms to the essence of education?

Answer:

The essence of teaching is to lead students to develop and the teacher’s job is to help students to find answers by themselves and to explore language learning methods by themselves. Therefore, the teaching activity that conforms to the essence of education is a series of questions thrown to students to help deduce proper answers.

Question2: What do you think are the main causes for the misunderstanding in the argument “English teaching in elementary and middle schools in China cannot be communicative competence oriented”?

Answer:

It ignores the fact that language is the tool for communication and communication is the function of language. It is through interpersonal communication that language remains active and vigorous. Therefore, one of the teaching goals of elementary and middle school English should be to develop student’s communicative competence. If communication is removed from the goals of English teaching, then language learning becomes a boring process of memorization. There’s no fun in it. Besides, without focusing on communication, language learning will be far from effective, since communication is the best way to learn al language.

Question 3: What do you think is the major mistake in the viewpoint “one’s vocabulary size is the indicator of whether one’s English learning is successful”?

This statement overemphasizes the role of vocabulary. It should be noted that vocabulary constitutes only a part of language; there is also grammar. Even if one has a good mastery of vocabulary and grammar, there are still culture and style to bear in mind. A successful English learner should have certain awareness of culture with a good command of vocabulary and grammar. S/he should be able to adjust his or her style on different occasions; his or her knowledge of English should be able to satisfy his or her needs successfully.