2023年宁夏电大开放教育英语本科论文项目设计报告鉴定表.doc

Design and Organization of English Listening Class
· 米玉巧 (初中英语  甘肃定西初中英语一班 )
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· 刊登日期： 2023-08-14 11:17:35
Design and Organization of English Listening Class Activities [Abstract] As the reformation of traditional ELT is advancing, and the ELT concept is changing gradually from teacher-centered pattern to student-centered pattern, the role of educators and learners should be accordingly renewed. The communicative language teaching (CLT) should be used more. In the traditional English class, teachers often use the “jug-and-mug” teaching method, and students just listen and take notes passively. It lacks of a communication between teacher and student. English class activity is the main useful way which can transform the traditional pattern. An effective class activity can arouse students’ interest, encourage them to take part in the activity actively, and develop their communicative competence, and improve the English class teaching result. In the English teaching, listening is often underestimated. Furthermore, the types of listening class activities are simple and dull. However, listening is the basis of English study. Listening class activities are related closely to speaking, reading, and writing. So more attention should be paid to listening class activities. First, this paper makes a generalization of the two main types of English class activities—the whole-class activity and grouping, and analyzes their advantages and disadvantages, and presents some solutions to the problems, which arise in the operation process. Then the paper analyzes the three main factors that influence English class activities, which are the teacher, students, and the types and content of activity. Finally, it expounds the design and organization of listening class activities in detail. [Key Words] English listening competence; class activities; design; organization 英语听力课堂活动设计与组织 [摘 要] 伴随英语教学改革旳不停深入，英语教学思想逐渐从以教师为主体转变为以学生为主体，教育者和受教育者旳地位也应当重新定位，交际法教学应当更多地应用于英语旳课堂教学中。在老式旳英语课堂中，教师“满堂灌”，学生被动地听讲、做笔记，师生之间缺乏交流。英语课堂活动是变化这一老式模式旳重要有效手段。英语课堂活动可以激发学生旳学习爱好，鼓励他们积极参与，培养学生应用语言旳能力，提高英语课堂旳教学效果。在英语课堂教学中，听力教学常常被忽视，听力课堂活动形式单一、枯燥。不过听力是学好英语旳基础，听力课堂活动与说、读、写紧密有关。因此听力课堂活动更应当受到关注。本文先总结了两大类英语课堂活动——全班活动和分组活动，分析了他们旳优、缺陷，并对其实行过程中所产生旳问题提出处理措施。然后分析了影响英语课堂活动旳三大原因——教师、学生、活动旳类型和内容。最终，详细论述了英语听力课堂活动旳组织与设计。 [关键词] 英语听力；课堂活动；设计；组织 1.Introduction As an important international language, English has gained increasing attention from Chinese. In the traditional ELT, teachers always act as absolute controllers. They always teach new words or grammars, explain texts, and assign exercises one by one. On the other hand, students only listen passively, and take notes mechanically, but seldom take part in the language practice. In real life, English is a communicative language. The goal of English language teaching is to enable the students to use English in the real world when necessary. In the traditional ELT, teachers always use some kinds of classroom activities to develop students’ writing skill but ignore listening, speaking skills. However, English language teaching practice should develop students’ overall language skills, namely: listening, speaking, writing, reading and translating. Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying, which is an important language skill in English classroom. Because listening is a critical factor to one’s language acquisition. If one can’t understand the teacher’s saying well enough, he/she will unable to carry out classroom instructions and to perform all class activities. 2. The types of English class activities English class activities are mainly divided into whole-class activities and grouping activities. 2.1 The whole-class activities The whole class activities are that students are doing practice together. They write or say together under the same order of the teacher. “The most common forms of whole-class activities are competition, game, guess, discussion, debate and so on.”[1] For example, when teaching listening, most teachers prefer to adopt this activity that students are asked to listen to the same material together and do the same exercises. Language learning is an emotional and psychological experience. “According to Krashen, the affective filter of the student or some psychological factors, can obstruct language acquisition to some degree.” [2] So if a student has litter motivation, lacks of self-confidence and so on, he/she will be not good at language acquisition, especially, to the kind of students who are afraid of making errors or “losing face” in public. For example, when a teacher asks several pointed students to answer the same question. English-proficient students always answer confidently even though they do not know the correct answer. On the contrary, less competent students in English behave with little confidence, because they are afraid that their answer is wrong. However, the best advantage of whole-class activities is just it can help to overcome students’ obstructive psychological factors, motivate students’ learning interest. Though whole-class activity can make a relaxed class, it always gives rise to noise. Moreover, somehow it is mechanical. It takes the whole class at the same language level, but ignores that there are many differences existing in a class. For example, after listening a text, all students do the same exercises at the same speed. But limited-English-proficient students may not finish within the time limit or English-proficient students may finish earlier and feel boring. Obviously, whole-class activities are not a good kind of activity in today’s English class. An English class not only needs a relaxed atmosphere for optimal learning, but also needs to consider the differences between students. So well organized group work is very needed. 2.2 Grouping In today’s language classroom, much of the class time, students are broken down into groups of different sizes. According to Wang Qiang, the most common groupings are lockstep, pair work, group work and individual study. 2.2.1 Lockstep Lockstep is where all the students are all doing the same activity at the same rhythm and pace, and under the control of the teacher. Teachers prefer to adopt lockstep when making a presentation, checking exercise answers, or doing accuracy reproduction. When the teacher asks questions, the students speak either together or one by one, in turns or indicated by the teacher. For example, when a teacher is going to teach a new listening lesson, he/she makes a presentation and explain some new words of the lesson at first. So the whole class listens to the teacher under the same order. On the one hand, all the class is concentrating in lockstep. The whole class is more orderly and easier for the teacher to control. Students can get good models from teacher especially in oral. And teacher’s words can practice students’ listening at any time. On the other hand, lockstep has some disadvantages. Such as, teacher may say more than students, as a result, students have little chances to speak. Some of the teacher’s unprepared、illogical and irrelevant words will give students unauthentic input. So when doing lockstep, the teacher should avoid speaking too much, otherwise, he/she is running the risky of “jug-and-mud” method. For example, before teaching a new listening lesson, it is unnecessary to explain the material too detail, but it is better for the students to listen and find the difficult points by themselves. It is advised that teachers should pay more attention on elicit replies or answers from students rather than speak out by themselves. 2.2.2 Pair work Pair work is where two students work together on a certain task. It is a very common method which is used in the communicative methodology.“It could be a competition over a game or co-operation in a task or project between the two students. They could also do certain exercises together or oral practice. ”[3] For example, students working in pairs to listen to two different but connected parts of the same listening material, then they tell each other what’s he/she has listened. In pair work, students are given more chances to practice, especially in oral. It also encourages co-operation which students should support each other. The most important one is that it creates a relaxed and non –threatening atmosphere. It seems easier for students to have less psychological pressure when thinking and speaking without being watched by the teacher or the whole class. So their proficiency level will become higher and higher. However, because students always think and speak without being watched, they may stray away from the task easier. And create noise and indiscipline. So before doing pair work, the teacher should explain the task clearly so that students are sure what they are supported to do. If necessary, the teacher may give instructions in the native language or demonstrate with one student first. The teacher should make sure every student has a partner. While they are doing pair work, the teacher should walk around the classroom to make sure every pair is working on the task, and give necessary help to them. If noise or indiscipline rises to an excessive level, the teacher can stop the activity simply, solve the problem with students and ask students to continue more quietly. If some pairs finish the task earlier than others, the teacher may give them another task so that they will not make noise or lose interest. 2.2.3 Group work “Group work is a learning activity which involves a small group of learners working together. Like pair work, group work is also an integral part of communicative methodology. The size of groups usually rages from three to eight students. The group may work on a single task, or on different parts of a larger task. Tasks for group members are often selected by the members of the group.”[4] There are many advantages of group work. First, it provides a psychologically positive affective climate to promote students’ self-reliance. Most students, especially sheepish or linguistically insecure feel stress when called upon in the public of the lockstep classroom. This stress is increased by the knowledge that they must respond accurately and quickly. In group work, students work together, they depend on their group members, and they do not care much of “losing face”. Such kind of confidence in group members allows them to speak out their thoughts and feeling without reluctant. Second group work improves the quality of student talk. In group work,“students are learning to collaborate with their peers. By applying such a learning strategy as cooperative learning, students are promoting both their cognitive learning and interactive skills. Students are exposed to new ideas and information, to different perspectives and approaches. They are in a process of discussing, questioning and organizing, which facilitates the comprehension and internalization of critical concepts and new information. As they are learning to justify and clarity their own points of view when exploring an issue or solving a problem, they are improving their linguistic competence as well as their overall communicative language competence.”[5] Third, group work helps to reduce the traditional student-teacher polarity, providing more opportunities for student-student interaction. It is simply that students do not have enough time to practice the new language in the traditional ESL class, which the teacher sets the same instructional pace and content for everyone, by lecturing, explaining grammar points, leading exercises, asking questions of the whole class. In this manner, the teacher takes at least half of a class period, and the time left for students to practice is inadequate. However, group work has some disadvantages too. As pair work, several students may stray away the task, making noise and indiscipline. And because students are not at the same language level, some English-proficient students may become the dominator of the group. All the suggestions for pair work are suitable for group work as well. But group work has another problem which is how to select group members. Here are some possible ways to group the students: group the students according to seating arrangement or different tasks; mix strong students and weak students together so that they can help each other: let students select their own group members, but this way is risky; also, the students can be grouped by drawing lots, which is more interesting. 2.2.4 Individual study Individual study is where the students are left to work on their own and at their own speed. It is always done in two ways: one is all the students take part in the activity but do different task, the other is one student participates, other students act as onlookers. People read and write at different speed, so it is a good case in doing individual study. In the listening teaching, teachers also can ask students listen to different difficulty level of materials to conform with different level’s listeners. Every class has all kinds of individual differences, such as, study attitude, interest, personality. But all of these differences are always ignored in other kinds of class activities. In individual study, students can do simultaneously, avoiding the risk of boring other students who do not have the same problem. And there has less indiscipline and noise. However, individual study is more boring than group work and pair work. Because it has less dynamic classroom and no co-operation between students, In other words, it is not good for students to develop their co-operational ability, and they may become boring in English study. In most cases, the whole-class activities, pair work, group work and individual study cannot be separated. Teachers take advantage of these kinds of activities and involve them so that the class activities can achieve the best result. 3. The factors influencing class activities Class activities are influenced by varied factors. Generally, the teacher, students and the form of activity are the most vital factors. 3.1 The teacher Teacher plays an important role at the class activities. It is impossible that a class activity will success without a teacher. Teacher is the activity’s designer, organizer, controller, prompter, participant and assessor. Before the class, in order to achieve a good result of the activity, the teacher has to design activities and make some preparations. He/she has to decide what’s the content and type of the activity, how to run it, the ability of the class, time available, etc. While students are doing the activity, the teacher should control over the activity to make sure students do the task in the certain target language and do not stray away the topic. Also, the teacher’s control which it concerns here means appropriate degree of control. When students come across difficulties while they are doing the activity, the teacher should he