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Abstract: The ultimate goal of English teaching is to activate students’ ability to express themselves in English. An effective way to realize this goal is through class activities. The article discusses the principles of designing class activities, some problems and the successful results of this method in English teaching.
Keywords: Class activities; expressive abilities;English teaching
中图分类号：G632.0 文献标识码：A 文章编号：1992-7711(2013)21-0024
I. Introduction
As time goes, there is a common recognition in education that English teaching should attach enough attention to cultivate students’ comprehensive language competence. To realize this goal, many linguists hold that there is a need to create appropriate condition under which students can express themselves in English successfully and students should be the center of teaching. Whereas, in traditional class, the teacher alone controls teaching and learning. He or she dominates the class by saying “listening to me” repeatedly, while the students only accept language in a passive position. Since they don’t have enough opportunities to use language, the realistic expressive abilities are poor. Actually, language teaching is guiding and fascinating learning, enabling the students to learn, setting condition for learning. (Brown, 1980.) The teacher can no longer be the source of knowledge and truth. He or she should create more opportunities for the students to use language and give the instruction. In this way, students can not only obtain language, but also develop their language competence.
II. The Principles of Class Activities in Teaching
The designing task for class activities should follow the principle that the activities should be creative, meaningful language activities. Teaching and learning a FL is considered as a kind of cooperative activity of the teachers and students. The art and craft of teaching is to bring into full play the initiatives of students.
1. Arrange Appropriate Activities
Just as Jeremy Harmer puts it in the book The Practice of English Language Teaching(1983), activities are probably the most often used catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of classroom work. In activities, the teacher’s main task is to organize activities that involve all the students. Activities involve the purposeful and active use of language where students are required to call upon their language resource to meet the needs of a given situation. 2. Provide Effective Learning Set
In the process of teaching and learning, students have to be provided with a meaningful set, that is, a disposition to relate the new learning task to their previously acquired linguistic knowledge as to arouse rich association. Thus all the knowledge can form relevant internet of knowledge. This not only helps students to internalize the language, but also leads them to internalize it into operation.
3. Encourage Motivation
“The truth of the matter is that about 99% of teaching is making the students feel interested in the material.”(Chomsky, 1988). Students have to be motivated by the intrinsic strength of the activity itself, so that students’attitudes will be sufficiently positive to motivate themselves to what to learn, especially when there may be clearly personal benefit to be gained from doing so. Students can make things meaningful if necessary and if strongly motivated to do so.
III. Design for the Types of Activities in Classroom Teaching
1. Organizing Activities by Taking the Form of Questioning as the Center
First, the teacher’s questions should provide a chance for the students to get ready for using English. Second, the teacher’s questions can motivate active conversation or discussion between the teacher and students. For example, after learning the text A Million Pound, the teacher can put forward such a question: “Is money everything?” Whether they agree or not, they are motivated to think about it and take part in the discussion. Third, the teacher’s questions should be related to the students existing cognitive schema and can elicit students’ potential and help to make students contribute as much as possible to classroom activities. Fourth, the teacher can control the students’ attention by a cluster of questions. At the same time, students ought to be encouraged to raise their own questions, for they are the subject in the process of teaching and learning.
2. Organizing Story-reconstruction Activities According to the Teaching Material
In such activities, students are required to retell stories according to the text in their own words and express their feelings about the characters. In this way, students are encouraged to put what has been learned into practice little by little. The teacher should guide students to apply the language of teaching materials to practice in connection with their thinking and lives. Thus students can represent their understanding by means of oral and written languages so as to improve their expressive abilities. Here we take The Necklace as example. It is a drama, but we can give the students certain clues and lead them to reconstruct the story in their own words. 3. Carrying Out Translation as a Testing Method to Consolidate Expressive Abilities
It is known that translation has been considered as a comprehensive skill of learning a foreign language. If students can reorganize another sentence according to the important sentence pattern in the text and take it as a way to test the learning results, the students can not only improve their translating skills, but also get the students into another state of expression. This will help them find out the weakness in the process of learning and teaching and rearrange their method.
4. Insist on Listening and Speaking Simultaneously
Actually, listening and speaking can’t be separated absolutely in our lives. Therefore, full attention should be paid to listening and further improvement of speaking. In the process of listening teaching, it is important to gain the necessary information. Besides, the teacher should introduce some important skills to the students and lead them to be more active in the process. What’s more important, teachers should lead the students to make full use of the listening materials to express themselves in different social circumstances. For example, we listen to a dialogue about a Chinese host meeting an English visitor at the airport, when the introductions are over and greetings are exchanged, the Chinese host continues the phatic communication by saying: “您一路辛苦了。”Of course, this is perfect in Chinese, but when put into English, many students may say: “I’m afraid that you have had a tiring trip.” Though grammatically correct, it is not perfect. So the teacher may stop the tape here for a few seconds to arouse students’ attention and thinking and then continue the tape. Several seconds later, the students can hear the appropriate expression: “Did you have a good trip?” In this way, the students can learn phatic language for expression during the process of listening and speaking.
5. Other Various Interesting English Activities
There are also various interesting and meaningful activities such as telling story race, guessing a riddle, English crossword puzzle, discussion or debate on hot topics, in which both the teacher and students can take an active part. All these activities not only help to create various opportunities to express in English, but also motivate students’ interest in learning English because interest is the intrinsic motivation. Interest is crucial to improve students’ realistic expressive abilities by means of a foreign language. IV. Some aspects Needed to Be Paid Attention to
1. How to Deal With the Students’ Emotion
In nearly all language teaching situations, not only are we dealing with the language and students and their particular cognition, we must also take into account the relational aspects of learning a new language. Teaching is conducted at two levels: content and emotion. It is important for the teacher to be aware of the students’ effective and psychological needs, sharing students’ feelings, emotions and spirits during the process of teaching. In other words, the teacher should make every effort to raise not only students’ IQ, but also their EQ. Only when the two aspects are promoted and advanced side by side, can the force of classroom magnet and cohesion enhanced. So the teachers are at all times sensitive to the characteristics of the group they are working with and aware of the process developing there.
2. How to Make full use of the Teaching Material
Teaching materials are the vehicles of English information. Professor Wang Cairen holds that teaching lies first of all in turning the written words in teaching materials into original utterance in lively communication.(王才仁，1996)Language activities are always based on the content of teaching materials. In terms of classroom teaching, there are real contexts and simulated contexts. Creating appropriate contexts is the most important point for organizing effective and successful activities. Therefore, the teacher should activate teaching materials in order to arouse the students’ interest and also make them take an active part in classroom activities.
V. The Successful Results of Activities in English Teaching
First, activities greatly stimulate students’ interest in English learning, which makes them long for English knowledge. At the same time, interest may contribute to arouse students’ motivation, which will help a lot to develop students’ all-round development in English competence.
Second, activities change mechanical operation into a flexible applying process. This greatly helps to develop students’ expressive abilities.
Last, the most important achievement is that activities result in the synchronized progress on both parts of the teacher and the students, especially the students. The process of these activities is seen as one in which people are trained creatively.
VI. Conclusion
From what has been talked about, we know that the ultimate goal of English teaching is to assist students to obtain comprehensive language competence. Classroom teaching activities should be carried out in various activities to improve students’ expressive abilities. However, it is not an easy job to make it. Though problems and difficulties ahead, it is our duty to achieve this goal in the process of teaching.
References:
[1] Harmer,T. The Practice of English Teaching[M]. London: Longman,1983.
[2] Chomsky,N.Language and Problems of Knowledge[M].Cambridge,MA:MIT Press.1988.
[3] 王才仁.英语教学交际论[M].南宁:广西教育出版社,1996.
(作者单位：广西北海中学 536000)
Keywords: Class activities; expressive abilities;English teaching
中图分类号：G632.0 文献标识码：A 文章编号：1992-7711(2013)21-0024
I. Introduction
As time goes, there is a common recognition in education that English teaching should attach enough attention to cultivate students’ comprehensive language competence. To realize this goal, many linguists hold that there is a need to create appropriate condition under which students can express themselves in English successfully and students should be the center of teaching. Whereas, in traditional class, the teacher alone controls teaching and learning. He or she dominates the class by saying “listening to me” repeatedly, while the students only accept language in a passive position. Since they don’t have enough opportunities to use language, the realistic expressive abilities are poor. Actually, language teaching is guiding and fascinating learning, enabling the students to learn, setting condition for learning. (Brown, 1980.) The teacher can no longer be the source of knowledge and truth. He or she should create more opportunities for the students to use language and give the instruction. In this way, students can not only obtain language, but also develop their language competence.
II. The Principles of Class Activities in Teaching
The designing task for class activities should follow the principle that the activities should be creative, meaningful language activities. Teaching and learning a FL is considered as a kind of cooperative activity of the teachers and students. The art and craft of teaching is to bring into full play the initiatives of students.
1. Arrange Appropriate Activities
Just as Jeremy Harmer puts it in the book The Practice of English Language Teaching(1983), activities are probably the most often used catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of classroom work. In activities, the teacher’s main task is to organize activities that involve all the students. Activities involve the purposeful and active use of language where students are required to call upon their language resource to meet the needs of a given situation. 2. Provide Effective Learning Set
In the process of teaching and learning, students have to be provided with a meaningful set, that is, a disposition to relate the new learning task to their previously acquired linguistic knowledge as to arouse rich association. Thus all the knowledge can form relevant internet of knowledge. This not only helps students to internalize the language, but also leads them to internalize it into operation.
3. Encourage Motivation
“The truth of the matter is that about 99% of teaching is making the students feel interested in the material.”(Chomsky, 1988). Students have to be motivated by the intrinsic strength of the activity itself, so that students’attitudes will be sufficiently positive to motivate themselves to what to learn, especially when there may be clearly personal benefit to be gained from doing so. Students can make things meaningful if necessary and if strongly motivated to do so.
III. Design for the Types of Activities in Classroom Teaching
1. Organizing Activities by Taking the Form of Questioning as the Center
First, the teacher’s questions should provide a chance for the students to get ready for using English. Second, the teacher’s questions can motivate active conversation or discussion between the teacher and students. For example, after learning the text A Million Pound, the teacher can put forward such a question: “Is money everything?” Whether they agree or not, they are motivated to think about it and take part in the discussion. Third, the teacher’s questions should be related to the students existing cognitive schema and can elicit students’ potential and help to make students contribute as much as possible to classroom activities. Fourth, the teacher can control the students’ attention by a cluster of questions. At the same time, students ought to be encouraged to raise their own questions, for they are the subject in the process of teaching and learning.
2. Organizing Story-reconstruction Activities According to the Teaching Material
In such activities, students are required to retell stories according to the text in their own words and express their feelings about the characters. In this way, students are encouraged to put what has been learned into practice little by little. The teacher should guide students to apply the language of teaching materials to practice in connection with their thinking and lives. Thus students can represent their understanding by means of oral and written languages so as to improve their expressive abilities. Here we take The Necklace as example. It is a drama, but we can give the students certain clues and lead them to reconstruct the story in their own words. 3. Carrying Out Translation as a Testing Method to Consolidate Expressive Abilities
It is known that translation has been considered as a comprehensive skill of learning a foreign language. If students can reorganize another sentence according to the important sentence pattern in the text and take it as a way to test the learning results, the students can not only improve their translating skills, but also get the students into another state of expression. This will help them find out the weakness in the process of learning and teaching and rearrange their method.
4. Insist on Listening and Speaking Simultaneously
Actually, listening and speaking can’t be separated absolutely in our lives. Therefore, full attention should be paid to listening and further improvement of speaking. In the process of listening teaching, it is important to gain the necessary information. Besides, the teacher should introduce some important skills to the students and lead them to be more active in the process. What’s more important, teachers should lead the students to make full use of the listening materials to express themselves in different social circumstances. For example, we listen to a dialogue about a Chinese host meeting an English visitor at the airport, when the introductions are over and greetings are exchanged, the Chinese host continues the phatic communication by saying: “您一路辛苦了。”Of course, this is perfect in Chinese, but when put into English, many students may say: “I’m afraid that you have had a tiring trip.” Though grammatically correct, it is not perfect. So the teacher may stop the tape here for a few seconds to arouse students’ attention and thinking and then continue the tape. Several seconds later, the students can hear the appropriate expression: “Did you have a good trip?” In this way, the students can learn phatic language for expression during the process of listening and speaking.
5. Other Various Interesting English Activities
There are also various interesting and meaningful activities such as telling story race, guessing a riddle, English crossword puzzle, discussion or debate on hot topics, in which both the teacher and students can take an active part. All these activities not only help to create various opportunities to express in English, but also motivate students’ interest in learning English because interest is the intrinsic motivation. Interest is crucial to improve students’ realistic expressive abilities by means of a foreign language. IV. Some aspects Needed to Be Paid Attention to
1. How to Deal With the Students’ Emotion
In nearly all language teaching situations, not only are we dealing with the language and students and their particular cognition, we must also take into account the relational aspects of learning a new language. Teaching is conducted at two levels: content and emotion. It is important for the teacher to be aware of the students’ effective and psychological needs, sharing students’ feelings, emotions and spirits during the process of teaching. In other words, the teacher should make every effort to raise not only students’ IQ, but also their EQ. Only when the two aspects are promoted and advanced side by side, can the force of classroom magnet and cohesion enhanced. So the teachers are at all times sensitive to the characteristics of the group they are working with and aware of the process developing there.
2. How to Make full use of the Teaching Material
Teaching materials are the vehicles of English information. Professor Wang Cairen holds that teaching lies first of all in turning the written words in teaching materials into original utterance in lively communication.(王才仁，1996)Language activities are always based on the content of teaching materials. In terms of classroom teaching, there are real contexts and simulated contexts. Creating appropriate contexts is the most important point for organizing effective and successful activities. Therefore, the teacher should activate teaching materials in order to arouse the students’ interest and also make them take an active part in classroom activities.
V. The Successful Results of Activities in English Teaching
First, activities greatly stimulate students’ interest in English learning, which makes them long for English knowledge. At the same time, interest may contribute to arouse students’ motivation, which will help a lot to develop students’ all-round development in English competence.
Second, activities change mechanical operation into a flexible applying process. This greatly helps to develop students’ expressive abilities.
Last, the most important achievement is that activities result in the synchronized progress on both parts of the teacher and the students, especially the students. The process of these activities is seen as one in which people are trained creatively.
VI. Conclusion
From what has been talked about, we know that the ultimate goal of English teaching is to assist students to obtain comprehensive language competence. Classroom teaching activities should be carried out in various activities to improve students’ expressive abilities. However, it is not an easy job to make it. Though problems and difficulties ahead, it is our duty to achieve this goal in the process of teaching.
References:
[1] Harmer,T. The Practice of English Teaching[M]. London: Longman,1983.
[2] Chomsky,N.Language and Problems of Knowledge[M].Cambridge,MA:MIT Press.1988.
[3] 王才仁.英语教学交际论[M].南宁:广西教育出版社,1996.
(作者单位：广西北海中学 536000)