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【摘要】本文进行了具体应用方法，在学习者的英语课堂活动。通过分析四课堂活动（因循守旧，小组工作，对工作和个人的学习），这在英语课上使用，我们得出一个结论，课堂活动中起着重要的作用，在中学英语课堂。课堂活动，作为一种最新的和最新的教学方法，仍然是值得进一步探讨和改进。
【关键词】活动教学法；课堂活动
Good，Better，Best——Analysis of Classroom Activities in English Teaching in Junior Middle School
Geng Yang
【Abstract】The work presented in this thesis paper focuses on the concrete application of Activities Approach in learners' English classes. Through the analysis of four classroom activities (lockstep, group work, pair work and individual study), which are used in English classes, we draw a conclusion that classroom activities play very important role in English classes in middle school. Classroom activity, as one of the newest and latest teaching methods, is still worth further discussion and improvement.
【Key words】Activities approach；classroom activities
Ⅰ. Activities Approach
During 1970s Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) developed and expanded rapidly. In 1980s CLT had many branches and formed Communicative Approaches. Activities Approach is one of the branches of Communicative Approaches (Harmer, 1983). It is one of the latest branches in Communicative Approaches, which teaches learners how to communicate efficiently and which sees the learners continuing interest and involvement in the learning process as being the dominating factor in language teaching.
In language teaching, “activity” can be understood in two parts. One is “activate”, the other is “act”. In “Australian Language Levels Guildelines” (1988, Book2. p19), “activity” is defined as follows:
“An activity involves the purposeful and active use of language where learners are required to call upon their language resource to meet the needs of a given communicative situation.”
According to Wang Cairen(1996) the fundamental features of Activities Approach are as follows:
(1) It can activate the contents of teaching material to real life.
(2) It can activate teaching to communication.
Activities Approach was formed in early 1980s.The main representatives are Prabbu's “task-based or process-based approach” (1983). When we mention Activities Approach, it refers to Harmer's balanced-activities approach. In the book: “The Practice of English Language Teaching”(1983) Harmer says, “A balanced-activities approach sees the job of a teacher as that of ensuring that learners get a variety of activities which foster acquisition and learning. The program will be planned on the basic of achieving a balance between language input, practice and communication output. In other words, our program will stress the need for language input (of the two types we have mentioned) and practice while seeing the necessity for an emphasis on communicative activities.”
There are two teaching principles according to “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” (Richards and Rodgers 2000,p64-73) as following
(1) Communicative principle:
Activities that involve real communication promote learning.
(2) Task principle:
Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.
Activities Approach provides PPP (presentation, practice, production) teaching pattern. According to “The Practice of English Language Teaching”(Harmer, 1983, 1988), the procedure of Activities Approach can be briefly as follows:
(1) Presentation is a process of introduing new information. It includes lead-in, elicitation, explanation, accurate reproduction and immediate creativity.
(2) Practice is the communicative activities, such as games, free talk, competitions, etc. The purposes of these activities are language
(3) Production refers to carry out the activities in order to fulfill some tasks, such as, teaching a consensus, stimulation and role-play, story construction, etc.
Ⅱ. The analysis of four classroom activities
A. Lockstep
“Lockstep is where all the learners are under the control of the teacher. They are all doing the same activity at the same rhythm and pace.”(Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
First, teachers should act as an organizer and as a resource provider. They should organize tasks that learners can carry out in the class. Teachers should attract learners' attention, cultivate their interest and language study. Furthermore, the activities, which are used, still should be paid much attention by teachers.
Activities:
(1) Check exercise answers
In this activity, learners give out the exercise answers by themselves. And then, teachers improve the answers.
(2) Make a presentation
In this activity, learners do duty reports.
(3) Do accuracy reproduction
In this activity, learners repeat the text.
(4) Note-taking。
In this activity, especially in listening, learners take notes by tape recorder and teachers.
B. Group work
“Group work is where the learners work in small groups. Each group has three, four or five learners, depending on the activity.” (Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
Group work is most beneficial when the activity requires contributions from more than two learners. It seems to be an extremely attractive idea for a number of advantages. Through this activity, learners' observation is transited from language's types to its content. The activity not only leads to learners' interest and resonant ness, but also stimulates the desire of learners' thought activities. (Shen Hua,2003, p14-18)
However, group work still has some disadvantages. One of them is the use of mother tongue by monolingual groups. It sometimes seems that they are unable or unwilling to take part in activities in English. So, in this situation, teachers should think about how to decrease the use of the mother tongue. There are three things teachers can do about the use of the learners' mother tongue:
(1) Talk to the learners
Have a discussion with the learners about the use of their language. Get them to understand that while sometimes it is not too much of a problem, during oral activities it is not helpful. Ask them what they think the point of communicative activities is and get them to agree that it is essential for them to try and stick to the use of English in such activities even when it is difficult.
(2) During an activity
Encourage the learners to use English. Go around the classroom helping learners away from their language for this activity. Learners will naturally slip into their language unless you remind them and prompt them.
Teachers' roles
In this activity, teachers should as facilitator to communicate the process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts. (Richards and Rodgers, 2000,p77). As mentioned above, when learners prepare their activities, teachers should go around and answer their questions, at the same time teachers can master how much they have prepared. There are three aspects following:
(1) Teachers should pay much attention to learners' motion, cultivate passion on language study;
(2) Teachers should pay much attention to learners' volition, stimulate their studying intension. (Zhu Chun, p328-329)
When learners show their activities, teachers should keep a record of how the learners appeared to work in their group, whether they do it well, cooperatively, noisily, unfocused, and so on. Also keep a record of the details of the group work: who is working with whom, what they are doing in groups, what time it is, when they do it in the lesson, and so on.
The demands and methods of setting up groups
Demands:
(1) The teacher should get familiar with the characteristics, hobbies, the basis of English and learning abilities of learners. Setting up groups should not only have relative stability, but also flexibility.
(2) The teacher should also pay attention to the groups' sizes, which we believe should be from four to six ideally.
(3) The teacher should select or assign a group leader, in order to make each group self-organized.
Methods
There are many ways to set up groups. Try to vary the basis on group learners:
(1) Learners can choose whom to work with;
(2) Learners turn round and work with their classmates behind/ in front of/ next to them;
(3) Learners can be grouped according to learning ability;
(4) Learners can be grouped to maintain a balance of girls and boys;
(5) Learners can be grouped by numbering learners1, 2, 3, 4 around the class;
(6) Teachers can cut up some postcards and distribute the pieces round the class-learners have to find who has the pieces which go with theirs and thus from a group;
(7) Strong learners and weak learners are mixed together.
This is often a good thing for the weak learners (although there is a danger that they will be overpowered by the strong numbers of the group and thus will not participate) and probably does not hinder the strong learners from getting the maximum benefit from the activity.
(8) Strong learners and weak learners are grouped separately to do different tasks.
This can be one of the major possibilities of group work; that where are learners of different levels in a class, different groups can be formed so that not all the learners are necessarily working on the same material at the same time.
Knowing these methods, teachers should operate some suitable activities.
Activities:
(1) Role play
Role-playing through cued dialogues
Role-playing through cues and information
Role-playing through situation and goals
Role-playing through debate or discussion
(2) Competition
Teachers divide whole class into several groups and let them finish the task such as to finish the limited blanks as quickly as possible.
(3) Topic discussion
Learners discuss a topic that is provided by teachers in groups.
(4) Project survey (Wang Cairen, 1995)
After finish a unit, learners can make a questionnaire about the content of this unit such as the grammar points, new words, the text and the writing part in groups.
(5) Jigsaw (Geddes and Statridge, 1979)
Learners listen to different taped materials and then communicate their content to others in groups.
(6) Cooperative discovery (Bryrne, 1978)
Teachers give some information to the group members and let them guess a person or an object.
(7) Reading dialogue according to the characteristics
C. Pair work
“Pair work is where the learners work in pairs.” (Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
The advantages of using pair work are similar to those of group work. However, in pair work, there is much limitation. For example, learners could get limited information from each other; and the activities and the methods of setting up pairs are still limited.
The demands and methods of setting pairs
Demands
To set up pairs, learners' personalities are one of the factors. Traditionally, it has often been assumed that learners who are extroverts will be better and faster than the introversive. Teachers put the extroversive and the introversive together, on one hand, the introversive have suppress to speak out; on the other hand, the extrusive can get confidence from his partner.
Methods
For variety, different learners can be paired together. Learners can be put into pairs with learners to their left or right, in front or behind, next.
Knowing these methods, teachers should operate some suitable activities.
Activities:
(1) Read the dialogue
(2) Make up the dialogue
After reading the dialogue, learners should make a new dialogue in the basis of the original one.
(3) Act out the dialogue
(4) Discuss topics
(5) Guess game
One learner show some information about an object and the other one guess what it is.
D. Comparing learners working in pairs and groups
Pair work and group work continue to be very popular with teachers around the world, yet very few studies have compared the two activities regarding their effectiveness for TESL, or their popularity with learners.
To investigate question one, quantitative data on levels of learner on-task behavior were collected over three months in five of the classrooms. Results from all five classes indicated that learners worked significantly harder in pairs than in groups of three. 158 learners were interviewed to collect opinions on question two; 59% reported that they prefer group work, and 41% pair work. For question three, it is suggested that there is a link between levels of on-task behavior and linguistic process. Additionally 50 learners, and 20 teachers from the Department of English, were interviewed. A majority of both learners and teachers stated that group work is more useful than pair work for ESL. (Grass. MS, 1997, p142)
E. Individual study
“Individual study is the stage during the class where the learners are left to work on their own and at their own speed. Usually, they are doing the same task, but the teacher will give them a choice of tasks.” (Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
In doing this activity, teachers should create good environment. The work is done by everybody themselves, so the environment should be quiet.
Activities:
(1) Reading
(2) Writing
(3) Listening
(4) Repetition
(5) Free-talk
Ⅲ. Conclusion
After stating the Activities Approach and the four kinds of classroom activities: lockstep, group work, pair work and individual study. We have got a general idea that many textbooks, training courses, and so on promote the use of classroom activities nowadays. Maybe in the process of practicing, teachers will face to some kinds of problems, such as how to arrange more than two activities effectively in the class. So teachers need to improve their own capabilities in all kinds of fields.
参考文献
［1］ Grass, M.S. Input, Interaction and the Second language learner. ［M］ Mahawah, New Jersey: Lawerence Erlbaum Associates. 1997, p46-50
［2］ Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. New York: Longman Group Limited. 1983, p78-81
［3］ Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. New York: Longman. Inc. 1988, p19
［4］ Jack, C, Richards and Theodore, S, Rodgers. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. :Cambridge University Press. 1986, p64-73
［5］ 沈华， “小组活动任务化在高中英语教学中的运用与探讨”， “中小学英语教学与研究”， 2003年增刊， p14-18
［6］ 王才仁、叶静坤， “活动：转变教学业方式的关键”（上、中、下）， “中小学业外语教学”， 1996年， 第7、8、9期， p2-6
［7］ 王蔷， 《英语教学法教程》， 北京：高等教育出版社， 2002年， p40
［8］ 朱纯，《外语教学心理学》，上海：上海外语教育出版社，2000年，p328-329
收稿日期：2012-02-28
【关键词】活动教学法；课堂活动
Good，Better，Best——Analysis of Classroom Activities in English Teaching in Junior Middle School
Geng Yang
【Abstract】The work presented in this thesis paper focuses on the concrete application of Activities Approach in learners' English classes. Through the analysis of four classroom activities (lockstep, group work, pair work and individual study), which are used in English classes, we draw a conclusion that classroom activities play very important role in English classes in middle school. Classroom activity, as one of the newest and latest teaching methods, is still worth further discussion and improvement.
【Key words】Activities approach；classroom activities
Ⅰ. Activities Approach
During 1970s Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) developed and expanded rapidly. In 1980s CLT had many branches and formed Communicative Approaches. Activities Approach is one of the branches of Communicative Approaches (Harmer, 1983). It is one of the latest branches in Communicative Approaches, which teaches learners how to communicate efficiently and which sees the learners continuing interest and involvement in the learning process as being the dominating factor in language teaching.
In language teaching, “activity” can be understood in two parts. One is “activate”, the other is “act”. In “Australian Language Levels Guildelines” (1988, Book2. p19), “activity” is defined as follows:
“An activity involves the purposeful and active use of language where learners are required to call upon their language resource to meet the needs of a given communicative situation.”
According to Wang Cairen(1996) the fundamental features of Activities Approach are as follows:
(1) It can activate the contents of teaching material to real life.
(2) It can activate teaching to communication.
Activities Approach was formed in early 1980s.The main representatives are Prabbu's “task-based or process-based approach” (1983). When we mention Activities Approach, it refers to Harmer's balanced-activities approach. In the book: “The Practice of English Language Teaching”(1983) Harmer says, “A balanced-activities approach sees the job of a teacher as that of ensuring that learners get a variety of activities which foster acquisition and learning. The program will be planned on the basic of achieving a balance between language input, practice and communication output. In other words, our program will stress the need for language input (of the two types we have mentioned) and practice while seeing the necessity for an emphasis on communicative activities.”
There are two teaching principles according to “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” (Richards and Rodgers 2000,p64-73) as following
(1) Communicative principle:
Activities that involve real communication promote learning.
(2) Task principle:
Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.
Activities Approach provides PPP (presentation, practice, production) teaching pattern. According to “The Practice of English Language Teaching”(Harmer, 1983, 1988), the procedure of Activities Approach can be briefly as follows:
(1) Presentation is a process of introduing new information. It includes lead-in, elicitation, explanation, accurate reproduction and immediate creativity.
(2) Practice is the communicative activities, such as games, free talk, competitions, etc. The purposes of these activities are language
(3) Production refers to carry out the activities in order to fulfill some tasks, such as, teaching a consensus, stimulation and role-play, story construction, etc.
Ⅱ. The analysis of four classroom activities
A. Lockstep
“Lockstep is where all the learners are under the control of the teacher. They are all doing the same activity at the same rhythm and pace.”(Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
First, teachers should act as an organizer and as a resource provider. They should organize tasks that learners can carry out in the class. Teachers should attract learners' attention, cultivate their interest and language study. Furthermore, the activities, which are used, still should be paid much attention by teachers.
Activities:
(1) Check exercise answers
In this activity, learners give out the exercise answers by themselves. And then, teachers improve the answers.
(2) Make a presentation
In this activity, learners do duty reports.
(3) Do accuracy reproduction
In this activity, learners repeat the text.
(4) Note-taking。
In this activity, especially in listening, learners take notes by tape recorder and teachers.
B. Group work
“Group work is where the learners work in small groups. Each group has three, four or five learners, depending on the activity.” (Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
Group work is most beneficial when the activity requires contributions from more than two learners. It seems to be an extremely attractive idea for a number of advantages. Through this activity, learners' observation is transited from language's types to its content. The activity not only leads to learners' interest and resonant ness, but also stimulates the desire of learners' thought activities. (Shen Hua,2003, p14-18)
However, group work still has some disadvantages. One of them is the use of mother tongue by monolingual groups. It sometimes seems that they are unable or unwilling to take part in activities in English. So, in this situation, teachers should think about how to decrease the use of the mother tongue. There are three things teachers can do about the use of the learners' mother tongue:
(1) Talk to the learners
Have a discussion with the learners about the use of their language. Get them to understand that while sometimes it is not too much of a problem, during oral activities it is not helpful. Ask them what they think the point of communicative activities is and get them to agree that it is essential for them to try and stick to the use of English in such activities even when it is difficult.
(2) During an activity
Encourage the learners to use English. Go around the classroom helping learners away from their language for this activity. Learners will naturally slip into their language unless you remind them and prompt them.
Teachers' roles
In this activity, teachers should as facilitator to communicate the process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts. (Richards and Rodgers, 2000,p77). As mentioned above, when learners prepare their activities, teachers should go around and answer their questions, at the same time teachers can master how much they have prepared. There are three aspects following:
(1) Teachers should pay much attention to learners' motion, cultivate passion on language study;
(2) Teachers should pay much attention to learners' volition, stimulate their studying intension. (Zhu Chun, p328-329)
When learners show their activities, teachers should keep a record of how the learners appeared to work in their group, whether they do it well, cooperatively, noisily, unfocused, and so on. Also keep a record of the details of the group work: who is working with whom, what they are doing in groups, what time it is, when they do it in the lesson, and so on.
The demands and methods of setting up groups
Demands:
(1) The teacher should get familiar with the characteristics, hobbies, the basis of English and learning abilities of learners. Setting up groups should not only have relative stability, but also flexibility.
(2) The teacher should also pay attention to the groups' sizes, which we believe should be from four to six ideally.
(3) The teacher should select or assign a group leader, in order to make each group self-organized.
Methods
There are many ways to set up groups. Try to vary the basis on group learners:
(1) Learners can choose whom to work with;
(2) Learners turn round and work with their classmates behind/ in front of/ next to them;
(3) Learners can be grouped according to learning ability;
(4) Learners can be grouped to maintain a balance of girls and boys;
(5) Learners can be grouped by numbering learners1, 2, 3, 4 around the class;
(6) Teachers can cut up some postcards and distribute the pieces round the class-learners have to find who has the pieces which go with theirs and thus from a group;
(7) Strong learners and weak learners are mixed together.
This is often a good thing for the weak learners (although there is a danger that they will be overpowered by the strong numbers of the group and thus will not participate) and probably does not hinder the strong learners from getting the maximum benefit from the activity.
(8) Strong learners and weak learners are grouped separately to do different tasks.
This can be one of the major possibilities of group work; that where are learners of different levels in a class, different groups can be formed so that not all the learners are necessarily working on the same material at the same time.
Knowing these methods, teachers should operate some suitable activities.
Activities:
(1) Role play
Role-playing through cued dialogues
Role-playing through cues and information
Role-playing through situation and goals
Role-playing through debate or discussion
(2) Competition
Teachers divide whole class into several groups and let them finish the task such as to finish the limited blanks as quickly as possible.
(3) Topic discussion
Learners discuss a topic that is provided by teachers in groups.
(4) Project survey (Wang Cairen, 1995)
After finish a unit, learners can make a questionnaire about the content of this unit such as the grammar points, new words, the text and the writing part in groups.
(5) Jigsaw (Geddes and Statridge, 1979)
Learners listen to different taped materials and then communicate their content to others in groups.
(6) Cooperative discovery (Bryrne, 1978)
Teachers give some information to the group members and let them guess a person or an object.
(7) Reading dialogue according to the characteristics
C. Pair work
“Pair work is where the learners work in pairs.” (Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
The advantages of using pair work are similar to those of group work. However, in pair work, there is much limitation. For example, learners could get limited information from each other; and the activities and the methods of setting up pairs are still limited.
The demands and methods of setting pairs
Demands
To set up pairs, learners' personalities are one of the factors. Traditionally, it has often been assumed that learners who are extroverts will be better and faster than the introversive. Teachers put the extroversive and the introversive together, on one hand, the introversive have suppress to speak out; on the other hand, the extrusive can get confidence from his partner.
Methods
For variety, different learners can be paired together. Learners can be put into pairs with learners to their left or right, in front or behind, next.
Knowing these methods, teachers should operate some suitable activities.
Activities:
(1) Read the dialogue
(2) Make up the dialogue
After reading the dialogue, learners should make a new dialogue in the basis of the original one.
(3) Act out the dialogue
(4) Discuss topics
(5) Guess game
One learner show some information about an object and the other one guess what it is.
D. Comparing learners working in pairs and groups
Pair work and group work continue to be very popular with teachers around the world, yet very few studies have compared the two activities regarding their effectiveness for TESL, or their popularity with learners.
To investigate question one, quantitative data on levels of learner on-task behavior were collected over three months in five of the classrooms. Results from all five classes indicated that learners worked significantly harder in pairs than in groups of three. 158 learners were interviewed to collect opinions on question two; 59% reported that they prefer group work, and 41% pair work. For question three, it is suggested that there is a link between levels of on-task behavior and linguistic process. Additionally 50 learners, and 20 teachers from the Department of English, were interviewed. A majority of both learners and teachers stated that group work is more useful than pair work for ESL. (Grass. MS, 1997, p142)
E. Individual study
“Individual study is the stage during the class where the learners are left to work on their own and at their own speed. Usually, they are doing the same task, but the teacher will give them a choice of tasks.” (Wang Qiang, 2002,p40)
In doing this activity, teachers should create good environment. The work is done by everybody themselves, so the environment should be quiet.
Activities:
(1) Reading
(2) Writing
(3) Listening
(4) Repetition
(5) Free-talk
Ⅲ. Conclusion
After stating the Activities Approach and the four kinds of classroom activities: lockstep, group work, pair work and individual study. We have got a general idea that many textbooks, training courses, and so on promote the use of classroom activities nowadays. Maybe in the process of practicing, teachers will face to some kinds of problems, such as how to arrange more than two activities effectively in the class. So teachers need to improve their own capabilities in all kinds of fields.
参考文献
［1］ Grass, M.S. Input, Interaction and the Second language learner. ［M］ Mahawah, New Jersey: Lawerence Erlbaum Associates. 1997, p46-50
［2］ Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. New York: Longman Group Limited. 1983, p78-81
［3］ Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. New York: Longman. Inc. 1988, p19
［4］ Jack, C, Richards and Theodore, S, Rodgers. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. :Cambridge University Press. 1986, p64-73
［5］ 沈华， “小组活动任务化在高中英语教学中的运用与探讨”， “中小学英语教学与研究”， 2003年增刊， p14-18
［6］ 王才仁、叶静坤， “活动：转变教学业方式的关键”（上、中、下）， “中小学业外语教学”， 1996年， 第7、8、9期， p2-6
［7］ 王蔷， 《英语教学法教程》， 北京：高等教育出版社， 2002年， p40
［8］ 朱纯，《外语教学心理学》，上海：上海外语教育出版社，2000年，p328-329
收稿日期：2012-02-28