English newspapers and magazines and the teaching of College English

Reading English newspapers and magazines is an effective way to help the students get the latest information worldwide and improve English levels. The present article first analyzes the features of the English newspapers and magazines and then proposes making good use of them through such classroom activities as discussing the hot issue and role-playing to provide more authentic situations in which the students can have chances to practice four English skills, achieving the ideal teaching result.

Application of Learning by Design Into the Cultivation of Multiliteracies:A Case Study of College English Teaching Practice at Soochow University

Multiliteracies are an indispensable component of language abilities in the modern age of information technology.First proposed by the New London Group in 1996, multiliteracies refer to the abilities needed to obtain the learning resources that are transmitted through different media and modals, and to apply different modes and means to communicate with others to create meanings.The cultivation of multiliteracies is not only a systematic process of constructing knowledge but also a dynamic cycle of designing learning activities.In undertaking an international multiliteracies project, the New London Group adopted a mode of learning by design to cultivate multiliteracies.Learning by design includes three progressive components of available design, designing, and redesigned, with available design referring to the learning resources available, designing being the work to be done to make use of the learning resources obtained, and redesigned meaning the regenerated and transformed learning resources that are to become the new learning resources for available design.When it comes to the stage of redesigned, the mode of learning by design enters a new cycle.Ever since learning by design was adopted, it became the main theoretical framework used to cultivate multiliteracies.The college English teaching subsequently developed at Soochow University followed and specified the general principles of learning by design while constructing its own specific mode, trying to integrate available design and designing into a dynamic whole geared toward cultivating multiliteracies(one of the three abilities needed to use English, together with language expression abilities and intercultural communication competences).With regard to available design, efforts were made toward building and expanding various learning resources, facilities, settings, environments, and other learning support systems at Soochow University.This was done to provide easy and selectable accesses to the Net^+ based multimedia forms of different learning resources and specific course contents.In designing, different task-based and project-driven classroom and extracurricular/term explorative learning activities, particularly those revolving around the two courses of Film English and Media English Reading, were created for students to actively undertake cooperative and interactive learning, facilitating their language application.The teaching of available design and designing was interdependently progressed and students' language acquisition and application were systematically integrated to promote the effective cultivation of multiliteracies.