2010 International Conference on E-Health Networking, Digital Ecosystems and Technologies

Study of Bilingual Teaching for Physics Experiment

JING Jia
School of electronic science and applied physics Hefei University of Technology Hefei, China e-mail: jjing@ipp.ac.cn

ZHUYing
School of mechanical and automotive engineering Hefei University of Technology Hefei, China e-mail: zhuying6428@yahoo.com.cn

REN Hong, MEl Zhong-yi

School of electronic science and applied physics Hefei University of Technology Hefei, China e-mail: mzyhgd@sina.com
Abstract-The

English-Chinese bilingual teaching in the physics experiment course is a significant approach to foster innovational talents in the new century in China. The applicability and feasibility of bilingual teaching in the course of physics experiment and the obstacles facing in the process of implementation are discussed. Various approaches and methods to overcome these difficulties and obtain better teaching effects from many aspects such as teaching materials, teachers, teaching method and students are presented. It is concluded that practice has proved the worth of bilingual teaching in physics experiment.
Keywords-bilingual teaching; physics experiment;

accumulated much experience in the field of physics. What is more, the mode of small class school is adopted, and it is good for the interaction between teachers and students [2]. II.
KEy FACTORS OF PHYSICS EXPERIMENT BILINGUAL
TEACHING

A.

Instructors

bilingual teachers; teaching effectiveness

I.

INTRODUCTION

Economic globalization and the rapid expansion of information networks are affecting every trade. Information and knowledge of the world are in a state of explosive growth, and this knowledge and information is increasingly published in English. As for Chinese student, English is not their mother tongue. In the climate of internationalization, China Ministry of Education started the "Bilingual Teaching Course Reform Plan" to improve the work of bilingual teaching reform construction from 2001. It is a new measure of teaching reform in universities, which is evitable to create a new way for talent cultivation of higher education [1]. The use of bilingual teaching for Chinese college student is crucial to our students' future success. Bilingual teaching is an absolute and important means to connect teaching and scientific research in China. It is accepted that most of the physics classic books are written in English, and the pre-knowledge and the latest applications are also written in English. The students trained by the Bilingual Teaching will be proficient in reading and writing the specialty literatures in English. For science and engineering students, the course of physics experiment has been a required class in most universities. Over the last thirty years, this course has

The key factor to the success of bilingual teaching is teaching instructors. The bilingual teaching has been implemented for a long time, and many schools in various areas are participating in the practice since 2001, but the effect is not obvious because the teaching instructors with bilingual teaching ability are deficient. English teachers are easy to regard subject teaching as language teaching, but subject teachers would always induce the difficulty in the communication between teacher and students because of their superficial English base. Only topping bilingual teachers can foster excellent bilingual students and bilingual talents. Only after the problem of the total teachers is solved, the development of bilingual teaching would obtain essential advance and form certain scale. For the present, teachers with oversea study experience are competent for this mission [3].
B.

Teaching materials

Though the course of physics experiment has been a required course to almost all the universities in China, the teaching materials are quite different from each other. Unlike other bilingual teaching courses, the oversea original materials differ in content and syllabus. We cannot introduce the English original books directly. Almost all the Chinese universities have their unique equipments in physics lab, so we have to compile our own teaching bilingual materials.
C.

Students

After conquering the college entrance exam, students are qualified in studying in universities. However, those are interested in English are more likely to succeed in

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bilingual teaching. The students that are interested in bilingual teaching can register online by the elective system of college on line. The registered students have to be formed as small-scaled class unit to guarantee the effect of lecture. It is good for student to have basic oral English skill to discuss with teachers during the course of physics experiments in English [4]. We can also classifY students as their English level to finish the teaching process.
r--

In the first part of each unit, we narrate the basic experiment equipments and main objective of this course, and because this part is shallow and unprofessional, we can use English to teach. We can teach the introduction to apparatus in English. But to some complicated analysis methods, if we teach in English, some students with worse English base may hardly understand. We may explain them in Chinese in details on the complex physics laws and theories. English teaching would increase the understanding difficulty of professional knowledge. We should not influence the learning effect of professional course because of the use of bilingual teaching mode, and the arrangement of teaching process should make students better understand physics knowledge, so teachers should decide the difficult degree of knowledge according to teaching content.

regular teaching

physics experiments

bilingual teaching

'--

teaching in English
I s it complex physics princples?

Figure

1.

Student classification

III.

FEASIBILITY STUDY OF BILINGUAL TEACHING IN PHYSICS EXPERIMENTS

With the help of internet technology, we built a website of bilingual teaching in physics experiments. On this course's website, we built up a development experiment terrace, released out the teaching materials of each student, provided the follow-up student to study and make it more perfect. Provided the contents complement of open sources in the experiment flat. Student can access the content of this subject anytime they want to. This course emphasizes that the practice and the theories teaching is also important, the theories teaching and experiment attains up 1: 2 about assigning of hours, after each physics theories explain, provided experimentations to complete, and at the time of the teaching, students are guided to complete a practical physics experiment project and communicate with teachers anytime during the process. IV.
PRACTICE OF BILINGUAL TEACHING IN PHYSICS EXPERIMENT

Figure 2.

Student classification

V.
A.

OBSTACLES IN BILINGUAL TEACHING

Teaching management mechanism

Physics experiment is a required base course, and some Chinese colleges begin to explore the bilingual teaching to this course in succession. Because of teaching materials, the bilingual teaching gives priority to Chinese teaching material and supplement by English materials. To obtain better teaching effect, we should reform general teaching mode, for example, compiling the English-Chinese conversation or Chinese-English conversation of some glossaries in the course, adopting the mode of small class school, increasing opportunities to communicate teacher with students or students with students by English, put the glossaries on website before class and solve the problem giving attention to listen and note. This course is mainly composed of 18 experiments, including mechanics, motions, electromagnetic, etc. Each experiment is a unit. Student will not feel frustrated because each unit is independent from others [5].

In the teaching management process, we should not only encourage to implement bilingual teaching for the course with necessary condition, but also ensure the teaching quality and level of bilingual teaching mode of physics experiment through scientific management measure to make bilingual teaching develop normally and favorably. For example, aiming at same teaching task, the bilingual teaching needs more hours to accomplish the task than general teaching for the hour arrangement, because it is narrated by English and Chinese together. If we don't add hours, we will not accomplish the teaching task in the next unit, or else, the teaching effect is not good because of rapid schedule. The student will not benefit much from the rapid schedule of bilingual teaching mode.
B.

Relationships between language teaching and subject teaching

In the process of bilingual teaching, the learning effect of physics experiment course should not be influenced because of the use of bilingual mode. The arrangement of teaching process should persist in the premise that student could better understand knowledge and physics principles. Under this thought, we can teach simple content and physics glossary by foreign language. And to profound physics theoretic knowledge and principle, we can particularly explain by Chinese, and we should not blindly pursue the teaching quality of foreign language. The classroom teaching should give priority to grasp physics

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knowledge, but not learn foreign language. After all, it is not a language class [6].
C.

VII.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Construction of teachers group

The construction of teachers is the emphasis to implement bilingual teaching at present. Though most teachers possess profound subject bases, but lack the cross and integration of subjects, and the subject teachers could not comprehensively grasp English. But bilingual teaching requires that teachers must possess comprehensive series knowledge structure, profound English knowledge and communicative ability of hearing, speaking, reading and writing, and posture language, which can better avoid misapprehension induced by cultural difference, and favorably utilize English to communicate. Bilingual teachers must be composite talents with multiple abilities, which require higher demands for teachers and future teachers. For the present, we may ask those who have the oversea study experience teachers to lead the teaching group and send those who want to take the bilingual teaching to be trained in the physics department of oversea universities [1].
D.

Bilingual teaching has negative effects in the process of physics experiments. Because of language barrier, some students find it difficult to completely understand the physics knowledge. At the same time, perfect teachers are experts from different subject whose language is mother tongue, or they are who have mastered teaching language. So it needs teachers with higher level English skills. Faced with ever-changing society and technology, many educators keep probing the effectiveness of bilingual teaching approaches. It is far from easy to teach students in accordance with their aptitude. Teachers should be extremely knowledgeable and insightful in their area of expertise and be able to disseminate that knowledge and those insights to diverse groups of students. They must also be skilled at using a variety of styles and techniques, as well as the latest technology at their disposal. Finally, they should inspire their students and equip them with the necessary tools such as English to pursue lifelong learning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Reform of course and teaching materials

This research work was supported by the Science Research and Development Fund of Hefei University of Technology (2010HGXJO075, 2009HGXJ0096). 2009HGXJ0086 and

The reform of teaching material is the difficult to implement bilingual teaching at present. The compilation of English teaching material basically takes the training of the English knowledge structure and lingual ability as the major idea, and there are few English teaching materials of subject, and to really implement bilingual teaching [6]. Different universities have various physics experiment equipments. We must compile English teaching materials of our own subjects, and it is a complex system engineering which should not only require familiar English and scientific knowledge system, but also arrange training of English hearing and reading skills and emphasize the thinking property and novelty property of the subject. VI.
BENEFIT OF BILINGUAL TEACHING

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