Practices, Challenges, and Suggestions for IELTS English preparation
At first, because the students complained that it was hard to understand the English version textbooks, teaching the course bilingually, by explaining the academic terms in Chinese, seemed like a reasonable solution. But during the teaching process, it was found that teaching bilingually made the students rely on the Chinese explanations. Some of the students were not willing to read the English textbooks even more.
n order to increase the learning outcomes, we tried to teach the course all in English last semester, encouraging students to spend more time in reading textbooks and materials before and after classes, and using more interactional skills to develop active learning. This study is to compare the students’ academic performances under bilingual teaching and IELTS by examining the students’ test scores, labs scores, and feedbacks. The results showed some interesting controversies, and let us think about how to promote IELTS education.
By using EMI, the English proficiency of both the teachers and the students will definitely influence the classroom speed. Especially at the beginning, the students need some time to get familiar with my English accents. There was no enough time to cover all the contents. To compensate for the limited class hours, some comprehensible sections were left for students as self-learning and group-learning materials. A brief review of the former sections at the beginning of each class is a helpful method to interact with the students and to make sure they could understand and acquire the academic knowledge. The lectures’ videos were also uploaded to the course website, for students to review.
The students with better English abilities reflected that in the bilingual class, the Chinese explanations made them feel bored, and no pressure to read the textbooks after lectures. But we couldn’t cover all the contents in the classroom, so the students only got the basic idea. In the EMI class, even less contents were covered in the lectures, but the students reflected that they were pushed to read more materials by themselves, so not only the academic knowledge but also their academic English have been improved.
