How to foster the capacity for automatic learning in the English teaching in middle schools

張培培

(山東省臨邑縣第一中學)

1.Create an automatically developing class atmosphere in middle schools

1.1.Develop an equal relationship between the teacher and students

The teacher and students are equal.The teacher is not equal to truth and knowledge and can’t master all the knowledge.And students can go beyond the teacher.Not all the teacher’schoosesand understandingsare right and authoritative.Students should have their own ideas.The teacher should communicate and talk with students in a platform.Students should even be encouraged to challenge teacher’s knowledge and views.The communication and talking will establish student’s independence to revolt authority and foster their local thinking.

1.2.Treat mistakes correctly

Makingmistakesisacommonphenomenon and it’s not a bad thing.On the contrary,it shows that students are making their effort to use the language.S.P.Corder,the authority of psychological linguistic asserts that making mistakes is very important to language study.(S.P.Corder 1972)Psycholinguist Selinker agrees in his “interlanguage” theory.He holds that the language used by language learners is a foreign language and is different from its native people used.It’s a middle stage between mother language and foreign language.So it’s unavoidable to have many unstandard sounds,tones,words,sentence structure and expressing style.(Selinker 1972,15)

The first duty of language teaching is to provide opportunity of learning and make students find out the mistakes and then make progress in the practice.

Some teachers disturb the students when they are speaking in a wrong way.This will dampen their enthusiasm and speaking English and even result in their silence to avoid making mistakes.What’s worse,it will waste lots of time but student’s capacity for using language is still unchanging.In fact,the spoken English every person speaks has thousands of “mistakes”.And the more he/she speaks,the more mistakes he/she corrects.As long as he/she speaks in English boldly,the mistakes he/she commits will be less and less.As a result,to the mistakes students commit in their spoken English,the teacher should upgrade students’level by practice instead of disturbing them to protect and develop their enthusiasm and stimulate their desire to advance.To the mistakes of written English,the teacher can ask students to discuss and underline them and then correct them by their own.

1.3.Pay attention to the comments on homework

Having done the homework,every student longs for the teacher’s approval,help and praise, so teacher should avoid monotonous “×”,“√” and an optional grade.Instead,teachers should give different comments to different students.

Prize the excellent ones and raise a higher requirement for them.For example：“Excellent!You haven’t made any mistakes,but try to make your handwriting nicer.”Encourage the not so good ones.For example,“I don’t think you are a foolish child.If you try your best,I think you can catch up with other students.I believe it.I’m waiting for your progress.”And to the medium ones,teacher can say “You’d better be more careful!Pay attention to the verbs and their uses!Work harder and then you’ll make much progress.”In this way,every student will make progress in English study.

1.4.Praise the students frequently

It’s a good idea to use praise frequently,especially with adolescence and in classrooms with many low-achieving students.However,what is more important than the amount of praise given is the way it is given.

Praise should be given for good performance relative to student’s usual level of performance.That is,students who usually do well shouldn’t be praised for a merely average performance,but students who usually do less well should be praised when they do better.It’s important to reward students for effort,for doing better than they have done in the past,or for making progress,rather then only for getting a high score.Because some students find it easy to earn A’s and B’s，whereas others believe that they have little chance of academic success no matter what they do.In this circumstance,neither high achievers nor low achievers are likely to exert their best efforts.And reward should be neither too easy nor too difficult for students to obtain.

1.5.The teacher should be full of vigor

A teacher should be full of vigor and in high spirits.Many experience of teaching prove that only in this way,can the students be influenced in high spirits and be full of vigor.And when the teacher is down in spirits,the students are in lower spirits.The different spirits not only produce different efforts in student’s grades,but also have quite an effort on students’attitude towards the teacher and the subject she/he teaches.

An excellent teacher teaches the students not only knowledge,skills and even method and capacity for acquiring knowledge and skills,but also brings them the spirits,enthusiasm and the strive perseveringly for English.Example is better than precept.This kind of spirit is beneficial to arouse and cultivate their enthusiasm of learning English.It’s also helpful to refine student’s sentiment.And the impact will be lasting and even lifelong.Some famous scholars,ancient and modern,Chinese and foreign,were addicted to and devoted themselves to certain subject because of their teacher’s influence.

1.6.Alleviate their anxiety

Anxiety is a constant companion of education.Every student feels some anxiety at some time while in school;but for certain students,anxiety seriously inhibits learning or performance.The main source of anxiety in school is the fear of failure and with it,loss of self-esteem.Low achievers are particularly likely to feel anxious in school,but they are by no means the only ones.We all know very able,high-achieving students who are also very anxious,maybe even terrified to be less than perfect at any school task.

Anxiety can block school performance in several ways.Anxious students might have difficulty learning in the first place,difficulty using or transferring knowledge they do have,and difficulty demonstrating their knowledge on tests.

2.Create situations and a happy atmosphere for students to speak English

Modern teaching works for improving the integrated quality of students.Teachers should change “teaching materials” into “teaching by materials”and teaching knowledge into fostering their capacity for innovating,putting knowledge into practice,getting and using the information,acquiring new knowledge,analyzing and solving the problems,communicating and cooperating and responsibility for nature and public.

While in the traditional teaching,the teacher is the center of class and he/she tells what students should know.Students are used to learning passively.As time goes on,they lose theirenthusiasm,so the traditional teaching is not conductive to developing their potential and fostering their capacity for automatic learning.Learning English in middle school,students have no opportunity to use it freely and naturally.And as English is increasingly difficult,students find that they often commit all kinds of linguistic mistakes and English has little relationship with their daily life.So they lose their interest gradually and even give up.So teacher should create situations and a happy atmosphere for students to speak English.

2.1.Use role-play

The situations teacher uses for students to play roles can be the ones that students have experienced in their daily life,for example：shopping and seeing doctor;the ones students haven’t experienced but may experienced later,for example：job hunting,complaint and consultancy and the ones students often see,listen or speak,for example：interviewing the witness about a traffic accident.The role-players are asked to speak correctly and speak in the role’s manner.So role-play needs students’ capacitiesforvocabulary,cultural,function,cohesion,cultural habits and communication strategy.

The role-play has many advantages.First,it can bring colorful experience to students.Students have opportunities to use the words,sentence structure and function in many different situations.So it’s helpful to improve student’s oral skills in different situations.Second,it can foster student’s capacity for communication in English.It not only asks students to use English to express information,but also has them to learn the expressing way to exchange feelings to make the discussion natural,smooth and the words polite and not offensive.Third,it provides opportunities for students to show themselves,which is helpful to exercise the language they have learnt and find the possible problems.Having found the problems,they can correct next time to accommodate themselves to real situations.Forth,it offers shy students opportunities to speak.Some students don’t like to say much especially on theirexperience,opinions,likes and dislikes.They always keep quiet.Role-play helps them to speak out their opinions in new identities.Fifth,it can stimulate student’s interest to learn English,give full play to their imagination and probe the use of English freely by different identities in different situations.

2.2.Use group discussion

It’s an activity that several students have a discussion around certain problem or situation.They exchange their opinions or have a debate orally.It’s helpful to improve their oral English and foster their logical thinking and debate skills.At the same time,they can learn from each other by discussion and solving problems.

On the choosing of topics,there are two views.Some maintain that students are interested in the topics they are familiar with,but others think such ones are too dull.They think fantastic ones are better because those have room for student’s imagining.But some holds such ones are difficult to understand and control.

In fact,the teacher should choose the topic according to students’situation.Generally speaking,students can speak more to the argument topics.The teacher can offer some relevant materials but can’t too much.Otherwise,students often only read material but don’t use their brains.In this case,the discussion is meaningless.

2.3.Apply every available means to foster students’sense of cross-culture communication

2.3.1 Compare the difference in daily express between English and Chinese.

Language is the reflection of certain society and culture.English and Chinese also have some different in daily express.The most typical is the reply to other’s praise.Westerners say “Thanks! ” to thank other’s appreciation,while we Chinese people often say“哪里？哪里？”to show our modesty.The reply “Where?Where?” astonishes some westerners.Another example is the answering of a call.When westerners answer a call,they will tell the other party their own number and identities.But our Chinese people often ask who the other party is.This is not so easy to understand for middle school students.So it’s necessary to put them together and compare them.After comparing,students should use them as often as possible.The teacher should encourage students to say “Hello” “Good bye”,express congratulations and show their sympathy and regret after class.

2.3.2 Make full use of pictures,films,and TV to have students experience western countries’cultural atmosphere and know more culture and customs.

For example,when studying “Christmas”,the teacher can choose a film relevant to the Christmas day and ask students to offer more information about Christmas day and other festivals.

During this period,they not only acquire more knowledge but also develop the capacity for consulting reference books,comparing and summarizing.

2.4.A special introduction can attract student’s attention

For example,if we learn the text A LITTLE HELLO,the teacher can use a riddle to introduce. “The first two letters of me is a man;the first three letters of me is a woman;the first four letters of me is a brave man and the whole of me is a brave woman.Who am I？ ” Learning FOOD and DRINKS,we can review through a game.The teacher asks the first student to tell the food he/she likes and the second one repeat and adds to what he/she likes.This way tempers student’s memory and arouses their logical thinking.

3.Help students to form good learning habits and improve their study strategies

English is a kind of language coming from life.During the process of learning,students should remember and use what they learnt in class to strengthen them.If the teacher wants to enhance student’s integrated quality of English,he/she must know how to learn first.And helping students to form good habits of learning is the key of learn English well.

3.1.Form the good habit of“reading”.

“Reading” is an important means to learn English well,containing two aspects“read aloud”and “read silently”.

“Read aloud” is a process of applying right sound and intonation and fostering student’s feeling to English.Students must read a lot and even remember the words,phrases,dialogues and text.Reciting is a laborious but better way to learn English well.

The other is “read silently”.Besides the text the students learn,they have to read one short essay of English everyday.The materials must be from easy to difficult.The more they learn,the more difficult and longer the materials should be. “Read silently” is helpful to strengthen and enlarge student’s vocabulary,to know some background,local conditions and customs.Meanwhile,it can help students do “Cloze” and “Reading” well.

3.2.Form the good habit of“speaking”.

The goal of learning English is communication.The teacher should guild students speak more to get rid of psychological obstacle of being afraid of committing mistakes and shy.The teacher should tell students the marrow and spare time for students to put into practice.More activities,such as reading aloud,making up dialogues,reciting and performance should be developed.The teacher can also hold some activities the students are interested in,such as story telling,introducing themselves and speech competition.These activities cannot only temper student’s capacity for listening and speaking and thinking in English,but also strength their capacity for knowledge inputting,preparing for using in the future.

3.3.Form the good habit of“l(fā)istening”.

“Listening” and “speaking” are complementary.Only the capacity for “l(fā)istening” and“speaking” are improved,can the English level be improved.Besides the materials they listen in class,they also should form the good habit of listening other tapes.There are two kinds of tapes.One is auxiliary listening tape,and another is special tapes for listening.It’s teacher’s job to guild students to choose tapes neither too easy nor too difficult.Listen everyday and then student’s capacity for “l(fā)istening”develop naturally.

3.4.Form the good habit of“writing”.

In the process ofEnglish learning,“reading”,“speaking”,“l(fā)istening” and “writing”are not independent.Students must form the good habit of “writing”.Writing means handwriting and writing compositions or diary.“Reading” is the process of getting knowledge and “writing” of feedback and putting into practice. “Writing” can improve student’s capacity for listening and speaking.

3.5.Form the good habit of “preview”and “review”.

“Preview” is an efficient way of fostering student’s capacity for automatic learning.After preview,students know what is difficult for them and will lay particular emphasis on that.“Preview” is a way of acquiring new knowledge and “review” is a way of strengthening knowledge.

3.6.Form the good habit of note-taking.

Nobody can remembereverything he learns,so do students.Teacher should guild students to put down the important sentence structure and grammar,especially the examples.At the same time,mark on where they don’t understand and ask teacher after class.

3.7.Form the good habit of consulting reference books.

When reading,students may encounter some new words and other questions.Teacher should ask them consult the reference books to get rid of instead of telling them the answer directly.If necessary,ask students to search and download files from Internet.

【Bibliography】

[1]Slavin RobertE．Educational Psychology Theory and Practice[M]．People’s Telephone and Postal Press．2004．

[2]Zhu Renbao．On Modern Teacher’s Quality[M]．Zhejiang University Press．2004．