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The opinion about online English education 1.Introduction Nowadays, a new development era of human society is coming, we call it the knowledge economy or information age. In this era, the conclusion without dispute is that the people's intelligence is the most valuable wealth, and education is all foundations. The informative society is a society of study, and a society of lifetime study. Through study people will gain the chances of surviving and developing in information- intensive society. So, all these will inevitably bring a deep revolution to education. Chen Zhi li, the Ministry of Education minister highly summarizes and puts forward: "The development of education skill will have a deep impact on educational idea and reform of the educational course of our country , it is a commanding point of the reform in education". The appearance and rapid development of Internet, which is changing traditional personnel training mode and method, makes online education become the main form of the social modern distance learning progressively, it becomes the most important trend of educational reform and development of countries all over the world, and has offered the extremely good opportunity to great-leap-forward development of our country education. The essence of online education is to offer the open distance education for society. Everyone can become the student of long-range teaching, and accept the famous school, the great teacher's high-quality knowledge system education. He can begin to study at any time and any place, such as, home, company, Internet cafe or electric classroom. As one brand-new" study with oneself" mode, the online education is being used by more and more people. ¡°According to optimistic estimate, over 600 million persons used Internet in 2002, 80% of the residents of industrialized country will enter Internet by 2007¡±, said Dr Wei yu, Vice Minister of Ministry of Education. ¡°That is to say, the developed part in the human society will be built by Internet -- the platform, which can transmit information at a high speed, hookup in the whole world extensively, including economy, politics, every field culture .You have to choose to jump onto the ship (the platform), otherwise, you must be washed away by the wave. You have no other choices.¡± At present, educational reform in our country aims to gaining, training and bringing up large quantities of inter-disciplinary talents at different levels to meet the challenge of economic globalization. At the basic stage of quality-oriented education, we must bring our education into advanced education system in the world and integrate with it. In addition, reform and opening-up deepen day by day, China economic and trade development is brought by the accession to the WTO, the bid for the 2008 Olympic Game, the frequent contacts with other countries all over the world, and the growing demands for international talents with each passing day. From the point, it is so essential to study and grasp international language. The so-called international language here is English. English has the advantage richly endowed by nature of language in network education. It becomes reality that web-teaching means, English teaching resource and software enter English classroom, when the teaching equipment of the school in our country upgrades, computer teaching platform and multimedia classroom is being set up. 2. The disadvantages of traditional learning In our country, traditional learning has three major disadvantages: regarding knowledge as the center, relying on the teacher, studying for the test. The school launches its teaching activity around three centers: the teaching material, the teacher and the classroom. Such a mode has made three enemies of study at least: first, thinking knowledge as technical ability, what reflect on English study is that the learner just think so long as he has learned only after remembering the words and grammars; Second, thinking that studying couldn¡¯t go on without teacher, the teacher needs to undertake responsibility to every aspect in study for students; Third, thinking passing the test as the only study aim. After more than ten years from primary school to university, our English teaching couldn¡¯t reach the effect of learning with thinking in English, being used to hearing, speaking, reading and writing in English. English, as a very practical and comprehensive tool, is a language that utilizes the vision, the sense of hearing, the constant experience of impact from phonotape and videotape synthetically, thus produces very strong reflection on the cerebral cortex. In traditional teaching means, because of the limitations of time, space, resource in classroom, what most students have studied is the " deaf and dump English". Living in the non-English environment, we have to make great efforts in such aspects as expense, time and energy to collect the English resource consciously and purposely. Because there is great disequilibrium on the regions in the quantity and quality development level of our country education, the provinces which are unable to support finishing and popularizing nine-year compulsory education still exist, so let alone the popularization of English education. To expand the number of people receiving an education conscientiously, and raise the whole nation cultural dynamics, we should develop modern network education. It is a hopeful choice in reality. 3. The characteristics of online English education A survey report of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows, because of the fast development and infiltration and application of information network technique in every profession, online education will become a new-type educational form with quicker speed and greater space, and form a divers education system together with classroom education, broadcast education, video education. We define the Network English education as a process in which people use modernized information technology based on computer multimedia and network communication overall to promote the reform and development of English education. It is an omni- directional, multi-channel, interactive English education activity. Its basic goal is to promote the reform and development of English education all-sidedly, and use many kinds of tools, multimedia technology, network resource, to establish the network, the resource base of English education and set up an all-round network English education system. Compared with other three education means----classroom education, broadcast education, video education, the open characteristic network education is particularly outstanding: From the educating target, the educational content, the educational environment, the educational way, the educational resources, etc. are opened all-sidedly. First, online education is no limitation to study time. Because the life rhythm of modern people becomes more and more quickly, especially the job-holders work so busily that they have no time to continue advanced study. The opening of Internet has determined the share of information resources on the network at any time, so we can get rid of the restriction of study time from traditional education. The learner can arrange time independently according his need. Rosenfeld, the builder of Network university Unext, said that we appreciate such a famous school like Harvard, but the question is that only 1% person have an opportunity and time to go to such famous university, so what we aim at is the 99% left. Second, online education is no limitation to study place. Online education has offered the equal chance to enjoy educational resources for any learner, It has broken through the regional demarcation to the school education, and has improved the utilization of educational resources greatly Third, online education has no limitation to learners¡¯ foundation. Although each student's knowledge foundation and study schedule is different, online education can offer the personalized service to different ones. Every learner can take an overall view of all network courses, then make choice of his starting point.