The Strategies of Lead-in in Middle School English Class---毕业论文

The Strategies of Lead-in in Middle School English Class---毕业论文 【标题】The Strategies of Lead-in in Middle School English Class 【作者】杨真霞 【关键词】导入;策略;重要性;原则;问题 【指导老师】鲁晓权 【专业】 【正文】 I. Introduction A. Definition of Lead-in in Middle School English Class Lead-in of teaching is that according to the teaching goals and curriculum, teachers use a variety of teaching media and teaching methods, clarifying learning objectives and requirements, to focus the students’ attention, stimulate students’ interest in learning, open the students’ thinking, triggering learning motivation. It always occurs before the introduction of new teaching contents. Educator said: “Lead-in is that a teacher designs a step to lead in the new teaching content before the start of bringing students into the learning behavior.” It is the whole teaching and learning activities in warm-up activities, designed to give students access to the best condition for the classroom learning in the shortest time. The success of lead-in directly relates to the whole teaching effectiveness. Suitable lead-in allows students to get ready to learn psychologically and intellectually, so that the students can enter a good state, stimulate students’ interest and desire for knowledge, and thus concentrate on learning new content. B. Importance of Lead-in in Middle School English Class Lead-in is not only the beginning of a lesson, but also the beginning of teachers teaching activities. It directly affects the entire class of teachers teaching effect, and also has a direct impact on the entire class efficiency of students’ listening to the class. It may not only mobilize and improve students’ interest in learning, but also make the classroom atmosphere live. It exercises the students’ speaking, and also inspires the students to use English way of thinking. Therefore, the success of Lead-in directly relates to the students’ learning effect. A new smart lead-in has a great significance on fostering the students’ interest in learning and stimulating students’ learning initiative, autonomy, and the creation of a harmonious teaching and learning situation. C. Purposes of Lead-in in Middle School English Class Firstly, it should arouse the students’ passion and interest. In psychologically, the students in teens are always curious about new things. Curiosity is the first motivation to learn language. As an English teacher, this is the first good chance to grasp students’ interest and desire to learn English. So a successful lead-in means a half success of your class. Secondly, it should get the students to know some information or background about the text. An important goal for the lead-in is to get the students to know some information connected with the new lesson. This can help students grasp the spirit of the text and understand it better. Thirdly, it should materialize the teacher’s own value. Students are clever. They are sharp at teachers’ behavior. It’s very clear for them to know if the teachers really know well about the topic of the text just from the lead-in. In their eyes, lead-in in middle school English class is also an examination of the teacher’s knowledge and ability. II. Problems of Lead-in in the Present Middle School English Class A. The Problem on Time Subject to a number of teaching research papers and books on traditional teaching, many teachers think that lead-in should be controlled in five minutes. The author thinks this is an error in time. Five minutes is not enough to carry out any discussion of a topic, but also not enough to cause students’ interest and enthusiasm in learning English. Chinese students originally lack the language environment of learning English. If English teacher still behaves in highly scripted, students will lose the last window to learn English national culture. The actual teaching process can be closely interlinked and should not supply the related content of English culture in the middle of the course. So we can say that lead-in is green space on which the students can breathe the fresh air. Preparation may quicken the workers. The teachers can adjust the time of this part according to their own actual situation. Only if the students have the motivation and interest in learning English, is the teaching able to be effective. For a successful and effective teaching in English class, the lead-in, presentation, understanding, consolidation and the end constitute a whole part and they are indispensable. The timing also should be controlled rationally, but we should not spend too much time for the lead-in in English class, to avoid affecting the entire lesson’s process. After all, the purpose of the lead-in is to find ways of making students quickly focus attention into the classroom, and arouse their strong desire to learn, create a pleasant learning atmosphere, so that they are willing to learn. If the teacher excessively catches this part, it only will be a waste of time for the main part of teaching, resulting in a bit top-heavy results. B. The Problem on Content Many teachers feel that lead-in should be the right remedy, and the content unrelated to the text can not become the content of lead-in. The author believes relevance and irrelevance is a relative issue. Middle school students are the groups which have the most active mind. If the content of lead-in is always platitude, it can not stimulate students’ interest in learning, nor to provide them with information that can be absorbed. That will not be able to play into proper artistic effect. Moreover, the materials used by middle school English teachers exist age-old questions in knowledge and information. If only the lead-in is designed closely to the theme of textbooks, the teachers themselves will feel dull. The successful and effective lead-in of classroom teaching must be closely linked to the theme and core, and must be targeted and focused. The scope of discussion about the theme and topic should not be too large, otherwise that will make the lesson’s center unclear, and unable to arouse the attention of the students. Therefore, the content of the lead-in must be refined selection. Don’t insist on lead-in in order to have lead-in. The purpose of the classroom Lead-in is to activate, inspire the students’ passion and introduce the knowledge, background and teaching purposes. So the teacher should pay attention to the difficulty of the content of lead-in and the English used can not be too difficult. If necessary, the teacher can use the Chinese language to help students understand, to shorten the time on lead-in. C. The Problem on Method With the popularity of teaching multimedia, many schools have the conditions for multi-media teaching. Traditional teaching model is considered backward and outdated. Multimedia in the lead-in process is intuitive and can play a lively effect, but that does not mean that traditional ways are undesirable. Sometimes the traditional modes of teaching are more human and easier to communicate between the teachers and the students. When we use the multi-media teaching methods, we still should be able to effectively combine traditional teaching methods, and make the two methods complementary each other to complete successfully the part of the lead-in. For different teaching contents and teaching purposes, as well as the different characteristic students and classes, if the teachers always use several old-fashioned ways of lead-in, it will make students feel dull, and unable to get the same teaching effect. Lead-in should be varied because of the different people, place and time, according to the actual situation in a flexible manner. Therefore, we should remember that the way of lead-in is not fixed, and should not be applied mechanically. For some Middle school in village, some teachers do not attach importance to lead-in and directly go to the theme at the beginning of the class. They still do not know that if the students also stay in the excitement with the other students’ laughing and playing at the beginning of the class. If the teacher immediately enters a new teaching content, the effect will not be desirable. Lead-in is to get the student’s attention back to the classroom, so that they can get ready to learn, and actively participate into the English teaching activity. Some teachers make the Lead-in as a mere formality and just casually say a few words. This lead-in is like warm water, and tasteless. Every step in the class is interlocking. Well-designed lead-in should summary the knowledge point of the last lesson and at the same time penetrates the focus on teaching a new lesson, and fully reflect the continuity of knowledge. Therefore, although the time of lead-in has only a few minutes, the teachers also need careful preparation and design. III. Characteristics and Principles of Lead-in in Middle School English Class A. Characteristics of Lead-in in Middle School English Class In an English class, the Lead-in should be the first step. The saying goes: “A good start is a half of the success.”1 If the teacher would like to get good effect in English teaching, he must pay special attention to lead-in .Therefore, there are some characteristics of lead-in in middle school English class. 1. Pertinence In class lead-in, the teacher should pay attention to the pertinence. According to the different teaching contents and students, the teacher should design different ways of lead-in. But the premise is to raise the attention of the students and make clear the purpose of classroom teaching. Of course, don’t lead in just only for Lead-in. Lead-in aims at mobilizing the enthusiasm of the students, and highlighting in the main teaching content, making clear the purpose of classroom teaching, and preparing for the new class. 2. Enlightenment Class lead-in should pay attention to enlightening. Modern educational theory suggests that the students are the subjects of learning. In the teaching process, teachers should fully develop the students’ initiative and enthusiasm in the learning process, inspire the students’ thinking, and create a relaxed and harmonious learning atmosphere for students to make the students become the masters of learning. For middle school students, they show a strong performance in a certain capacity. In the class teaching, the teacher can make the way of asking questions, talking freely, discussing as the Lead-in of classroom teaching. In this way, it can inspire the students’ thinking, and also develop the language speaking skills of students. 3. Intuitiveness Class lead-in should pay attention to intuitiveness. Psychological practice has proved that if the memorizing material can be directly manipulated or become targets of the activity, the effect of memorizing will be better. At present, Chinese students learn English in a lack of language environment. So the teachers should make full use of the existing condition of teaching facilities, the use of textbooks, teaching materials, and create an environment which is favorable for language learning as much as possible. In English teaching on weekdays, in order to allow students to learn actively and lively, the teacher can use an intuitive way, namely the adoption of specific objects, pictures, stick figures, photographs, slides, sound recordings, video, VCD and other means. An intuitive means can be clearer than the verbal descriptions and make it easier to arouse the curiosity of students. 4. Novelty Class lead-in should pay attention to novelty. Now the students can easily absorb the new things and new information. They have a curious sense of new things, and eager to find out. Therefore, the new and creative information can more attract students’ interest. The more novel the materials, the more people concerned. The more close to student’ life, the students will be more interested in participating in the class, and the results will be better. 5. Interest Class Lead-in should pay attention to the interest. Suhomlinski said: “The start of teaching point firstly is to stimulate the students’ interest and aspirations in learning.”2 From psychological perspective, interest is a good mood which is generated in the process of learning about the things. This mental state will encourage learners to actively seek knowledge and find out the things, ways and means, and demonstrate a strong sense of responsibility and strong spirit of inquiry. Therefore if class lead-in is full of interest, the students will be studying as a kind of spiritual enjoyment, and thus can be more consciously active in learning. 6. Diversity The methods of teaching lead-in are diverse, but we are also facing the different teaching subjects who are different levels in their learning, so the teacher should design the kinds of lead-in according to the actual situation in a flexible use. But as long as the method of work is able to stimulate students’ interest and curiosity, expand students’ thinking, mobilize the enthusiasm of students, it should be regarded as validity. The old saying says: “learn the new things from reviewing.”3 It is the most commonly used method that leads the new lesson from the relevant content of the old class. By using the form of questions closely related to the new lesson, from simple to difficult, from thin to deep, the teacher uses one or a few issues to spark out of the students’ thinking naturally and smoothly. And the students accept the new lesson happily. And the transition is also very natural. This approach allows students to consolidate what they had learned, easy to logically link the old and new knowledge to facilitate the teaching of teachers to carry out step by step. B. Principles of Lead-in in Middle School English Class The development of anything is dominated by specific regulations. The various steps of English teaching are also dominated by their own principles. The following are some principles of lead-in. 1. Relating to the Content of the New Lesson and the Students’ Real Life Lead-in is the important step in the entire classroom teaching and by no means exists in isolation. Lead-in must be served for the whole class. When the teachers in designing lead-in can not be open-ended, but are sure to organically combine the way and the content of the Lead-in with the content of the new lesson. The teacher should select some practical details or well-known knowledge areas linked to the lessons learned, and then give their own views. The lead-in can not only be accepted and welcomed by the students, but also give smoothly the introduction of relevant lessons to learn. 2. Controlling the Time For the entire system of the English class, the lead-in is not and can not be the main body, and it is just only a prelude. So the time of Lead-in should be moderately allocated, not be overwhelming and should be normally controlled within 3 to 5 minutes. However, lead-in should be given in rational time according to the different content of the lesson and the different students. 3. Improving the English Teachers’ Professional Quality Although lead-in is only a small part in the teaching process, it can also reflect the quality of teachers. Teachers must be familiar with the system and content of teaching materials, and fully understand the students’ current situation of mastering the knowledge. And they need a broad range of knowledge and creative thinking. The teachers have a strong ability to manage the classroom as well as the ability to act according to the different circumstances; teachers must have strong ability of English expression and a certain performance skills, in order to make good use of the story into law. The teachers should adapt to the requirements of modernization of education, master multimedia computers, the Internet and other application of modern ways of teaching. In short, English teachers should adapt to the requirements of the times, improve their own quality in more aspects in order to design a spectacular and attractive lead-in, and can manage this step and even serve for the main process of teaching. 4. Meeting the Student’s Age Characteristics and Psychological Characteristics “Interest is the best teacher.”4 In order to stimulate the students’ enthusiasm and desire for knowledge, teachers must proceed from the student’s interest depending on their age and psychological characteristics, to select the ways and materials which interest them. According to the variability and diversification of method, the teacher can design out of the ever-changing and colorful Lead-in, just like one bright spot to light the whole 45 minutes of classroom and more like fire seed to light the students’ thirst for knowledge. 5. Serving for the Main Part of the Lesson The purpose of lead-in is to lead in the main part of the lesson through various novel, intuitive and interesting activities to activate the classroom atmosphere so that the students learn English unconsciously and generate a strong interest in learning and the desire for knowledge. However, teachers had better not design much too fancy lead-in, and the time should not be too long (usually 5 minutes or so), but also we should pay attention to the consistency of its style and class in order to properly serve for the main part of the class. And the Lead-in should not be designed overwhelmingly. IV. Strategies of Lead-in in Middle School English Class A. Strategies of Lead-in of Listening Lesson in Middle School English Class Pre-listening activities should aim to motivate students, to activate their prior knowledge, and to teach key words or key structures to the students before listening begins so that students are effectively, thematically and linguistically prepared for the listening task. The following are some pre-listening activities. 1. Predicting Research in listening has shown that good listeners are good predictors. By helping our students become better predictors, we are helping them become better listeners. There are many different activities that can be used to encourage students to predict the content of what they are about to hear. If there is a picture with the listening passage, the students can be asked to predict what the passage will contain before they listen. If there is no picture, perhaps the teacher can find or draw a picture that fits the text. Visual aids are immensely helpful in aiding students’ comprehension. “They attract students’ attention and help and encourage them to focus on the subject in hand.”5 Another way of carrying out predicting task is to let students read the listening comprehension questions before they listen. In this way, they can guess the topic of the listening text. Sometimes, the teacher can even ask the students to guess the answers to the questions before they listen. Notice that even though students may not always be able to predict the correct answers, they will be more motivated to listen to the passage to see if their predictions are correct or not. 2. Setting the Scene Setting the scene for your students before listening is another type of pre-listening activity. As we have said before, listening to passages in the classroom can be more difficult than listening in real life because of the lack of context. So, you, as the teacher, can help provide the background information to activate your learners’ schema and with your help, your students will be better prepared to understand what they hear. For example, there is a task. “Suppose your students are going to listen to a passage about Yao Ming. How would you set the scene? Note down your ideas and then share with other people in your group.”6 3. Listening for the Gist The third type of pre-listening activity is listening for the gist. It is very important to give your students practice in this area, because in real-life, they will not be able to listen to something several times. Therefore, it will be impossible for them to catch all the details. Students need to learn to cope with some ambiguity in listening and realize that they can still learn even when they do not understand every single word. Listening for the gist is similar to the concept of skimming a passage in reading. The key is to ask students one or two questions that focus on the main idea or the tone or mood of the whole passage. Notice that students can answer the gist questions even though they do not understand every word or phrase in the passage. If the passage is recorded well, students will be able to guess the answer simply from the tone or voices of the speakers. 4. Listening for Specific Information There are situations in real life where we listen only for some specific information and ignore the rest of the entire message. For example, when we listen to the weather report on TV, we are only interested in the temperature in the city where we live or where we plan to go on the weekend. Similarly, when we are at a train station or an airport, we listen to announcements only relevant to our travel destinations. It is important to expose our students to a variety of types of listening texts for a variety of purposes so that they will develop a variety of listening strategies to use for different situations. 5. Summary on Pre-listening Activities These are just a few examples of pre-listening tasks. Using their creativity, teachers can think of many more. Most of the time, we would only use one kind of pre-listening activity before each listening session. Pre-listening tasks should not take much time. Remember the purpose is to motivate students, activate their schema, to add context, prepared them for necessary language so that the actual listening itself becomes easier. B. Strategies of Lead-in of Speaking Lesson in Middle School English Class Pre-speaking activities involve thought and reflection, and provide opportunities for students to plan and organize for speaking. Some purposes for pre-speaking are to choose a speaking topic, to determine purpose and to determine audience. Some activities for pre-speaking are listed below. First, the teacher introduces the topic and arouses interest. Second, the teacher utters the title of the presentation and leads a small discussion about it. Third, the teacher provides some language material to use in pre-speaking. Forth, the teacher asks questions or gives another reason before talking about a topic. Fifth, the teacher asks the students’ questions to access students’ knowledge and familiarity with the topic. Sixth, the teacher focuses on some speaking strategies (like starting a discussion or ending a speech) before the discussion. Seventh, the teacher brings some visual materials to the class and students’ comment on them. Eighth, the teacher sets a scene that will be helpful for students to imagine the setting related to the topic. Ninth, the teacher tells a joke, an anecdote or a real life event to introduce the topic. Tenth, students watch a related movie, a cartoon or a documentary before talking about the topic.7 C. Strategies of Lead-in of Reading Lesson in Middle School English Class The purpose of pre-reading is to facilitate while-reading activities. Harmer calls this stage of reading lead-in, where the teachers prepare students linguistically for the tasks in reading, familiarize them with the topic of the reading text, and draw on students’ existing knowledge. One of the major reasons for this is to create expectations and arouse the student’s interest in the subject matter of the text. 1. Predicting Predicting is an important reading skill. The reader’s predictions, whether right or wrong, will get his mind closer to the theme of the text to be read. Then the real reading may either confirm or reject the predictions. Reading with predictions can make reading more intriguing and purposeful and therefore is likely to result in better comprehension compared with the situation where the learner starts reading with a blank mind. Predictions can be done many different ways. Firstly, predicting based on the title. Good titles always contain the most important information of a written text. Predictions based on studying the title seldom go far wrong. Secondly, predicting based on vocabulary. Having made predictions based on the title, students can be asked to predict some lexical items that they think are likely to occur in the text. Then the students read the text to confirm their predictions. Thirdly, predicting based on the true or false questions. The teacher gives students some true or false statements. Students predict if these statements are true or false. Then students read the text and check if they have made the right predictions. 2. Setting the Scene The second type of pre-reading activity is setting the scene, which means getting the students familiarized with the cultural and social background knowledge relevant to the reading text. 3. Skimming The third type of pre-reading activity is skimming, which means reading quickly to get the gist, the main idea of the text. There are many situations where we do skimming. For example, when we read newspapers, we usually read very fast to get the main information and only spend more time on those items that are more important. 4. Scanning The fourth type of pre-reading activity is scanning, which means to read to locate specific information. The key point in scanning is that the reader has something in his mind and he should ignore the irrelevant parts when reading. On a day-to-day basis, we scan figures, train schedules, time-tables, phone numbers, news headlines, dictionaries, etc. So it is useful to use these materials for practice in the classroom. Questions for a scanning activity are often about specific information. D. Strategies of Lead-in of Writing Lesson in Middle School English Class Prewriting exercises provide key words, meaning, and structure before the students write the first draft, and help students overcome “writers block”. It may help students focus intellectually, narrow and define topics for your paper, develop logical or architectural structure to topics you have identified and provide a context for “project management”. Three exercises in prewriting are listed below. 1. Free writing Use a blank paper or computer screen and set a time limit of 5-15 minutes, summarize the topic in a phrase or sentence and generate a free flow of thought. And then write anything that comes to mind, whether on topic or off, for the period of time you chose, don’t pause, don’t stop, don’t rush and work quickly, and don’t review what you have written until you have finished. At the end of your time, refer back to the beginning, repeat a word, phrase, or important thought or emotion that makes sense. Review whether there are words or ideas you can grab into the topic. 2. Brainstorming Once a topic is chosen, it is suggested that students work together to brainstorm ideas for writing, because students’ thoughts can be inspired by each other’s sparkling points. In the brainstorming session, students can list all the ideas related to the topic on a piece of paper or on the blackboard. Some ideas may be useful, while others may not. But this does not matter at all. The important thing is to get students to think freely and put down all possible ideas that come to their minds. 3. Mind Mapping First, think in terms of key words or symbols that represent ideas and words. Second, take a pencil (you’ll be erasing!) and a blank (non-lined) big piece of paper or use a blackboard and (colored) chalk. Third, write down the most important word or short phrase or symbol in the center. Think about it and circle it. Fourth, write other important words outside the circle. And draw over-lapping circles to connect items, or use arrows to connect them (think of linking pages in a web site). Fifth, leave white space to grow your map for further development, explanations, and action items without analyzing your work. Sixth, think about the relation of outside items to the center, erase and replace and shorten words for these key ideas, relocate important items closer to each other for better organization, use color to organize information and link concepts with words to clarify the relationship. Seventh, freely and quickly add other key words and ideas, think weird tape pages together to expand your map and develop in directions of the topic. As you expand your map, tend to become more specific or detailed. V. Conclusion In the process of English teaching, although we should get great emphasis on the students, the role of teachers is still not to be ignored. And Lead-in of new lesson is one of the most important roles. As the British linguist HG Widdowson said: “Only if teachers coordinate the daily teaching activities, they make the two sides of teaching and learning at the same time get significant practical results.”8 Therefore, teachers should fully play this role well and design a good Lead-in for every lesson. The methods of Lead-in in English teaching are diverse. According to different types and contents of courses, teachers can choose different means to lead in. The only aim of these methods is to stimulate students’ interest in learning, and to enlighten their minds, so that students rebuild self-confidence, feel that English is easy to learn and very interesting, and reduce anxiety and achieve better result. Therefore, Lead-in must have a strong purpose to enable students to know what to learn, how to learn, why to learn. And it is to have good correlation to the old knowledge. Even it should be more interesting, fascinating and enlightening to attract students’ attention. If so, the students are able to learn more and improve their English listening, speaking, reading and writing, and have greater chance to become the persons who are needed by our country and society. Notes 1 符永权，《教师理论研究》，北京:北京大学出版社，2008 (1)，第54页。 2 Suhomlinski，“Scholarly Campus,” (Jimei University Educational Science Edition, 2005), 35. 3 H.G..Widdowson，Aspects of Language Teaching (Oxford University Press, 1990), 67. 4 Ibid., 79. 5 Ibid., 246. 6 Liudaoyi, Junior English Book (People Education Press, 2005), 125. 7 8 HG Widdowson, “ELT and EL Teacher,” ELT Journal (1992), 333. Bibliography C.Jacques, and LiuDaoyi, eds. Senior English for China. People Education Press, 1997. H.G .Widdowson. Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford University Press, 1990. 程晓棠、郑敏. 英语学习策略. 北京:外语教学与研究出版社，2002. 刘道义. 刘道义英语教育自选集. 北京:外语教学与研究出版社，2007. 王笃勤. 英语教学策略论. 北京:外语教学与研究出版社，2002. 王蔷. 英语教学法教程. 北京:高等教育出版社，2000.