初中英语课堂教学导入环节有效性研究

初中英语课堂教学导入环节有效性研究 -以嘉兴城南中学英语课堂导入教学设计为例 摘要本文致力于研究如何在初中英语课堂中展开有效的导入环节。本文认为导入在初中英语课堂中扮演着不可或缺的角色。有效的导入能帮助一堂英语课堂更好的进行，也能帮助学生提高学习兴趣。并且本文认为有效的导入过程离不开心理学的运用。因为只有掌握了学生的心理，教师才能更好地展开教学设计和教学活动。因此本文通过结合皮亚杰认知发展理论中的同化、顺应和平衡三过程，分析作者在城南中学实习时所记下的几个教学导入案例，并根据同化、顺应和平衡三个过程提出有效导入应遵循的原则和各原则对应的有效导入方法。关键词：导入；初中英语教学；同化；顺应；平衡AbstractThis paper tries to figure out how to carry out effective lead-in in English class in junior middle school. As is known to us, lead-in plays a significant role in English class teaching. An effective lead-in can make an English class go on smoothly and it can also help the teacher arouse students interests of learning English. And the author believes that education is closely related with psychology. If a teacher wants to carry out his teaching design or activities successfully, he must make use of psychological theories. Therefore, this paper analyzes three teaching designs of lead-in from Chengnan Middle School, based on Piagets cognitive development processes- assimilation, accommodation and balance. And the author comes up with three principles for effective ways of lead-in by using the three processes. And there are also several effective ways of lead-in according to each principle.Key words: lead-in; English teaching in junior middle school; assimilation; accommodation; balanceContentsAbstractII1. Introduction11.1 The background of this research11.2 The research purpose and methods12. Literature review22.1 About lead-in22.1.1 Definitions of lead-in22.1.2 Researches on lead-in at home and abroad22.2 Theoretical framework32.2.1 Main factors affecting English classroom teaching32.2.2 Psychological basis42.3 Previous studies53. Case studies63.1 Basic information of Chengnan Middle School63.2 Analysis of some lead-in cases from Chengnan Middle School73.2.1 Case 173.2.2 Case 283.2.3 Case 394. The principles for effective ways to design lead-in94.1 Assimilation104.2 Accommodation104.2.1 Intuitional instruction114.2.2 Situational communication114.3 Balance124.3.1 Discussion124.3.2 Review125. Conclusion12Bibliography14Acknowledgements15V1. IntroductionThis paper mainly talks about the effectiveness of lead-in in English classroom teaching in junior middle school. Lead-in is being paid more and more attention nowadays. And many researchers did research on it from different areas such as pedagogy, linguistics and psychology. This paper tries to use part of psychological theories to carry on research. The background of this research and the research purpose and methods are as following:1.1 The background of this researchEnglish Curriculum Standard(2011) points out that interest, motivation, confidence, will and spirit of cooperation are the main factors influencing students studying progress and result. Teachers should constantly arouse and strengthen students interests of learning English. And according to junior middle school students characteristic, the best time to arouse students interests is at the beginning of a class, that is, lead-in plays an important role in arousing interest. And the reasonable design of classroom lead-in can stimulate the students participation in class activities, help them enter an easy study condition and improve teaching efficiency. (Zhou Mingxia, 2014: 83) But sometimes teachers dont pay much attention to lead-in as they care too much to the test, which may lead to the failure of a class.1.2 The research purpose and methodsThe main purpose of this paper is to discuss how to give out an effective lead-in in English class in junior middle school. And the paper is based on Piagets theories about childrens cognitive development- assimilation, accommodation and balance. That is, the author tries to figure out effective lead-in methods by using the principles of assimilation, accommodation and balance. And there are also several teaching designs of lead-in to support the ideas in this paper.All of the teaching designs of lead-ins are from Chengnan Middle School. The author took them down while listening to the teachers classes as an intern in Chengnan Middle School. And there are also some other examples in this paper, and they all come from NSE books.And the author does the research by analyzing the teaching designs of lead-in, comparing different ideas from other writers and combining the examples with the theories.2. Literature review2.1 About lead-in2.1.1 Definitions of lead-inAs is known to us, there are five main steps in English classroom teaching- lead-in, presentation, practice, production and summary. Lead-in is the first step. And as its name goes, lead-in means before starting a new lesson, teachers should design some activities or some words to stimulate students interests and lead them into a new lesson naturally. And at the same time, it is required that students should get some information or background knowledge about the new lesson in lead-in. The later parts of a class are greatly influenced by lead-in.2.1.2 Researches on lead-in at home and abroadReferring to the importance of lead-in, the researchers abroad has been researching for it for a long time. They think highly of the role of lead-in. For example, both C. Turney and Roger Gower attached great importance to the background of learning and the application of various methods to arouse students keen craving for knowledge at the very beginning of the class to improve the effectiveness of teaching results. (qtd. in Wang Hongmin, 2012: 11) Hence it is paid close attention to by the researchers abroad.Not only the researchers abroad think highly of the influence of lead-in, but also the domestic researchers keep a watchful eye on it. And there are many articles about lead-in from different aspects.Shao Jizu(2014) said in his paper that there were various kinds of ways to give out lead-in, what the teachers were supposed to do was taking students learning condition, students psychological characteristic, teaching contents and teaching methods into consideration.Lei Da & Song Wei (2010) viewed that the implementation of lead-in just cost several minutes, however, the students status could be changed just in these several minutes. They believed that a successful lead-in of new lessons could not only stimulate students desire to learn, but also realize the connection between knowledge.Wang Xuan & NieSen (2012) suggested that different kinds of class should be with different kinds of lead-in. They thought some classes focused on training receptive skills and some focused on training productive skills. As for the classes focused on training receptive skills, the teachers can make students do some simple performance to maximize students involvement in class. And for the classes focused on training productive skills, the teachers can ask students how they expect activities should be carried out.Chen Xiao (2008) pointed out that lead-in had nothing like a fixed model, that is, it was flexible. And playing games was a common way used by many teachers. What should be paid attention to was catching the extent of the game. The games should serve for the contents of the new lesson.We can know from the opinions above that they all attached great importance on the role of lead-in. They all agreed that a good lead-in can steer students interest of learning English. And they also gave out some suggestions about how to lead in well and what should be followed when carrying out lead-in. But they seldom mentioned how they come up with those methods.2.2 Theoretical framework2.2.1 Main factors affecting English classroom teachingThere are many factors affecting English classroom teaching. And this paper mainly focuses on interest, pertinence and stressing the role of students.Firstly, it is about interest. Just as an old saying goes: “Interest is the best teacher.” The interest can motivate students to learn more. So if the lead-in is interesting enough for students, the result will be good. But English as a foreign language, in fact, is a little bit difficult for some students. That requires teachers choose materials of lead-in according to students psychological features. And make full use of these materials by organizing exact teaching language. Only in this way can the students focus their attention on the new lesson at the beginning.Secondly, it refers to pertinence. Pertinence refers to that the teaching language used by teachers should be closely relevant to the teaching objectives and requests. Teachers should design different kinds of lead-in according to different teaching contents and students condition. (Wang Yue, 2010: 140) And lead-in should also connect new knowledge with old knowledge. And a good lead-in can make students know what is going to learn and help teachers go on their lessons smoothly.Last but not least, stressing the role of students is important. Different from several decades ago, the education today stresses that students should be the center of a class. This can be well realized in lead-in of an English class. Junior middle school students are at the age that they want to perform themselves. (Chen Chuanguang, 2012: 66) Hence the activities of lead-in such as everyday talk or role-play can make the atmosphere in classroom active. Naturally, students interests are easily aroused. But one thing should be considered is that the performance shouldnt take too much time.2.2.2 Psychological basisAs we all know, we cannot separate education from psychology. And students in junior middle school are at the age of psychological developing. And their cognitive structure is also in development. So this means that teachers should take students cognitive development into consideration while designing a teaching design.Piaget discovered that there are three basic process influencing childrens cognitive development - assimilation, accommodation and balance. (Xie Fu, 2016:75) When talking about the three basic processes, schema must be mentioned. The term “schema” refers to a category of knowledge that you currently hold that helps you understand the world you live in and provides some basic guidance for future events. A schema describes how we organize information. Assimilation is a blending of the previous information with new knowledge. And the process of assimilation occurs when you add new information to an existing schema to better understand your world. Accommodation refers to part of the adaptation process. The process of accommodation involves altering ones existing schemas, or ideas, as a result of new information or new experiences. New schemas may also be developed during this process.Balance refers to the balance between assimilation and accommodation. The learner makes its cognitive development from one balance to a better balance through self-regulation mechanism. And the balance usually appears when the new knowledge is almost equal to the old knowledge.2.3 Previous studiesAlthough many researchers focus more on how pedagogy works on lead-in in English class, more and more researchers start to keep a watchful eye on psychology. And they attach great importance to childrens cognitive development process - assimilation, accommodation and balance. Some views are as following:Li Jun (2009) figured out that the methods of lead-in could be divided into topic introducing (assimilation) and situational communication (accommodation). Topic introducing refers to making use of the relation between old knowledge and new knowledge. Situational communication refers to making students participate in classroom activities actively through the extension of topics.Chen Huiying and Xue Guojun(2016) pointed out that when people deal with new things, they rely on schema to predict, explain and absorb the external information. Then construct new schema and make the original schema reach a new balance through assimilation and accommodation. Learners explain their experience on the basis of the old knowledge and the education received before. When there is external information, they will compare the external information with the previous experience and work out intentionality with emotional experience. Thats the process to create a new internal knowledge structure.Cheng Jie (2015) viewed that learners form and adjust their cognitive structure by the mutual interaction of old knowledge and new knowledge. And the cognitive structure is gradually constructed through assimilation and accommodation and develops itself in the circulation of “balance - imbalance - new balance “.In short, more and more researchers have noticed the important role of cognitive development processes in lead-in. And many papers have mentioned that. However, most of them only talks about the importance of it but never mentions how to carry out effective lead-in according to assimilation, accommodation and balance. And the author tries to make it in this paper.3. Case studiesThe author takes three teaching designs of lead-in as examples to analyze how the three processes of cognitive development work for effective lead-in. And all of the cases are from Chengnan Middle School.3.1 Basic information of Chengnan Middle School3.1.1 Teaching situationChengnan Middle School is a public school in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province. The school thinks highly of the role of students in classroom. And as for the subject - English, the school carries out English teaching not only in classroom but also online. On weekdays, students can learn English from the teachers in English class. And on weekends, students can learn something about English from Smart Class- an online study app.3.1.2 Student analysisThe three cases involve three classes of three grades-Class 3 Grade7, Class 4 Grade 8, Class 2 Grade 9. And the student analysis of each class is as following:Students in Class 3 Grade 7 are new students in the school. Their knowledge about English is not so much, but their understanding and the ability of learning new knowledge is good. And as is new here, they are curious about things in junior middle school. Therefore, they are interested in the new lessons given by teachers. And the learning atmosphere of this class is very active.Students in Class 4 Grade 8 are not so active, compared with students in Grade 7. They have been in junior middle school for one year, which means they are familiar with almost all the things. Hence their interests are not easy to be trigger. But as they have one-year learning experience in junior middle school, their knowledge accumulation is better than students in Grade 7. That is, they have better understanding and ability to learn new things.Students in Class 2 Grade 9 are faced with the entrance examination of senior high school. And as is common to see in junior middle schools, the atmosphere of class is usually down. And because they are at the age of 16 or 17, they are shy to participate in the class activities sometimes. But with two-year learning experience, they can deal with some knowledge with a little difficulty. 3.1.3 Teaching levelEnglish teachers in Chengnan Middle school have a good command of how to teach English. With many years teaching experience, they can catch the language points correctly and design a class acceptably. They pay much attention to students learning state while giving a lesson. And this paper mainly involves two of the teachers in that school- teacher A and teacher B. The teachers involved all have good teaching ability. And the grades of their classes come out front in each grade. The students all like them very much.3.2 Analysis of some lead-in cases from Chengnan Middle School3.2.1 Case 1The content of case 1 is from NSE Grade Nine Module 4 Unit1 I can look after myself, although it wont be easy for me. This unit mainly talks about staying at home alone. Teacher B led in the new lesson by doing like this:(Before class, she played a small part of the humorous film Home Alone)T: Have you ever seen the film?S: Yes.T: Have you had the experience of being at home alone for a few days?S: Yes, I have./ No.T: (Ask someone said yes) How did you spend the time?S: I watched TV, did my homeworkT: Could you look after yourself?S: Yes, I could do a lot of things by myself.T: What did your parents ask you to do or not to do?S: My parents asked me to remember to close the door when getting outJust like the example above, the funny video played before class can attract students attention into class quickly, and the questions asked by the teacher is related to students experience. As students of Grade Nine, most of them had the experience of staying at home alone. Therefore, when being asked by the teacher, they had something to say. And easily, the atmosphere of the class was activated soon. At the same time, assimilation happened during the process. Students got some new information about home alone from other students and the teacher, based on their own schema.3.2.2 Case 2The content of case 2 is from NSE Grade Eight(Two) Module 5 Unit 2 It describes the changes in Chinese society, which mainly talks about Lao She Teahouse. Teacher B led in the new lesson like this:(Before class, the teacher played a video about Lao She Teahouse)T: Do you know what the video is about?S: It is about Lao She Teahouse.T: If we go to Lao She Teahouse, what can we do?S: Drink tea?T: Yes, maybe we can drink tea. / We can eat delicious Beijing food. / We can also enjoy Beijing Opera, traditional music or magic shows.T: Do you know something about Lao She?S: He is a famous writer in China.T: Yes, and I have more information about him for youStudents in junior middle school may know little about Lao She Teahouse. Teacher B played a video at first to help students know more about Lao She Teahouse. Students can get a lot new information that didnt exist in their schema before. So during the video, they received new stimulation which cant be assimilated by the original schema. And after the video, teacher B gave out several questions and also gave the answers for the students. During that process, students understood the information given by the teacher, and changed their original schema. That is, accommodation happened at that time. 3.2.3 Case 3The content of case 3 is from NSE Grade Seven Module 2 Unit 2 These are my parents, which mainly talks about the jobs of family members. Teacher A led the lesson in by doing like this:T: Do you still remember we have four new friends in Unit 1.S: Yes, Tony, Lingling, Daming and Betty.T: Can you say something about them? Choose one you like.S: Tony is a student. He is from EnglandT: Very good. And can you talk something about yourself?S: Im from Jiaxing. Im 13 years old. I m a studentT: Yes, you are students. What about me?S: You are teacher.T: And where do I work?S: Chengnan Middle School.T: Yes, I work at Chengnan Middle School. How about Ms. Liang?S: Also Chengnan Middle School.T: Good. Ms. Liang and I work at the same school.In this case, teacher A talked about four students at first, as students are familiar with it. And then she asked students to talk about themselves. When they mentioned that they were students, the teacher caught the point. She changed the topic towards herself to lead in job. This is the process of assimilation. And then the teacher led in phrases “work at” and “at the same place”. Students have never met these phrases before, and after listening to the teachers explanation, they got it and added them into their schema to form a new schema. This is the process of accommodation. And in the whole lead-in, there exist assimilation and acco