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試論中學(xué)英語(yǔ)教學(xué)中的素質(zhì)教育
試論中學(xué)英語(yǔ)教學(xué)中的素質(zhì)教育 I Abstract. This paper deals with some aspects of quality-oriented education in the TEFL context: the cultivation of ideal qualities, psychological qualities, linguistic competence and communicative competence. The writer holds that English teaching should be quality-oriented and in the TEFL context, teachers should develop not only the learners’linguistic competence, but also their ideal qualities and psychological qualities as well as their communicative competence. TEFL in China should lay more emphasis on improving the students’ ability to communicate. Teachers should make good use of the learners’ non-intellectual capabilities, fully enlarge their scope of knowledge and help them construct their own models of learning.
II Key words. TEFL, Quality-Oriented Education, Ideal Qualities, Psychological Qualities, Linguistic Competence and Communicative Competence.
III Introduction. The quality of human beings refers to the established physical and psychological attributes formed on the bases of inherited and acquired characteristics through the influence of environment and education. It’s a delicate combination of intellectual civilization and material civilization that impacts on human beings. It includes ideal qualities, intellectual qualities, physical qualities and psychological qualities. The aim of quality-oriented education is to cultivate, perfect and improve these five qualities for the nation, especially in the young. (Li Guoqing)
IV Ideal qualities. English teaching should include ideal quality teaching so as to influence the learners’ ideals and improve their morality while they learn the language.
i Using the texts. The texts in JEFC and SEFC have many materials concerning history, geography, culture, science, biology and so on. Some of these have valuable ideological contents. The teacher should explore them in the textbooks. Such texts as “Body Language”, “Queue Jumper”, “Thomas Edison” and “Karl Marx” are all good texts for ideological education. We can teach the students to help others and be polite in “Body Language”; to observe the public order in “Queue Jumper”; to work hard and love science in “Thomas Edison” and to cultivate their interest and confidence in foreign language learning by reading the text about Karl Marx.
Let’s take as an example - SEFC, BOOK 2A, Unit 3: Body Language. Lesson 9. A. Introduction. The teacher asks the students - T: “If you ask for a Sony Walkman in a shop and the shop assistant tells you that they’ve got no Sony Walkman, what will you say to the assistant?”
The student replies - S: “It doesn’t matter. But could you tell me where I can get one?” Here the quality of teaching could enhance the students’ quality of ideals by making suggestions to the students for pursuing the purchase of a Sony Walkman.
B. Explanation of the text. Mr. Black - “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Can I carry those boxes for you?” Tom - “Thanks a lot. It’s very kind of you.” Mr. Black - “What about your bag? Would you like me to carry it for you?” Tom - “No, thanks. I can manage it myself.”
C. The inferring. Students do pair work. After an analysis of the characters and their psychological activity in the above text, the students now have had some idea of the essence of the text. So the teacher can use the overhead projector to explain the difficult problems in the text. While analyzing the overhead, the teacher should point out the essence of the text, which is, helping others and demonstrating independence. So the inferences are as follows: S1: “Can I help you with your difficult problem?” S2: “No, thanks. I prefer to work it out by myself.”
S3: “Shall I wait for you?” S4: “That’s very nice of you.”
D. The exploration of the text. The teacher instructs the students - 1. “It’s necessary to do as the host does.” 2. “It’s good manners to offer help to others.” 3. “It’s good morality to refuse help when you can manage yourself.” The above three sentences are all the exploration of the deep essence of the text which can be used to carry out ideal education. (JEFC and SEFC)
ii Using sample words and sentences. 1. - matter- : The thing that ‘matters’ is not whether you succeed or not, but whether you try or not. 2. - compare - : Our teacher often ‘compares’ books to friends. Shakespeare ‘compared’ the word to a stage 3. - come to - : The foreigners ‘have come to’ realize that China is nolonger what it used to be. Through the teaching of the above sentences, the students can learn not only the essential language points, but also something about life and patriotism.
V Psychological qualities. Learners are the substance of learning and development. They can only get their knowledge efficiently when the teaching-learning system is in accordance with their learning regularities. The teachers’ teaching is only an external influence. During the operation of quality-oriented education, great attention should be paid to the exploration, molding and perfection of the learners’ psychological development and their non-intellectual factors. Non-intellectual factors, which include recognition, motivation interest, determination and personality, are the reflectors of objectivity. These can modify and promote the learners’ intellectual factors. (Li Hongyu, Yin Guo’en)
i Cultivating the students’ interest in study. Motivation and interest are very important factors in learning. These two aspects of learning should cover the whole process of English teaching. We should try to change the learners’ attitude from “I have to study” to “I want to study”. (Xu Shaozhong). Many investigations and researches suggest that the result of learning depend on the learners’ Intrinsic Motivation. (Brown). Once they are interested, the learners will work harder, more actively and positively.
From the writer’s own learning and teaching experience, the learners seem to have greater interest in the anecdotal and cultural background of the texts. There are some interesting dramas in SEFC such as “The Necklace”, The Merchant of Venice” and “At the Tailor’s Shop”. The teacher can prepare definite material concerning the text, also the anecdotal and cultural intentions of the author. For example, the character of the hero or heroine, or perhaps the unexpected ending of the drama or the play itself. The students will surely be more attracted to the material and learn more efficiently, no matter what you ask them to do. Just explaining some language points is not sufficient. It is essential for the teacher to study and be familiar with the text so that the lesson is interesting and attractive to the learners.
ii Strengthening the students’ determination and emotion in learning. A good frame of mind speeds up learning. Learning efficiency can be enhanced if the learners’ intellectual activities are transformed from delight and interest into careful thought and reason. The teacher should create this kind of pleasant learning atmosphere by his own movements, gestures and expressions that suggest to the learners that they are being cared for, trusted and expected to do well. Great attention must be given to protect the learning enthusiasm of the low-leveled learners and lead them to understand that they really have the ability to overcome their learning difficulties. Further more, the teacher should be modest and strict with himself. Modesty-humility, an active work attitude and nthusiasm will stimulate the learners’ interest and increase their enthusiasm and determination to learn.
VI Linguistic competence. i Listening and speaking. Many theories of modern English teaching methodology as “Total Physical Response” and “The Natural Approach” aim mainly at listening comprehension. (Ma Yinchu). “The Silent Way” especially emphasizes that during a rather long period of silent time for listening, the learner has a sense of security and he doesn’t have to worry about being forced to speak if without enough preparation. (Brown)
Speaking of his “Input Hypothesis”, S. Krashen points out that when one learns a language, he first pays attention to the meaning rather than the language structure. Structure acquisition can be obtained if one tries to understand the information that is going to be absorbed. The teacher should input a correspondent amount (i+1) of comprehensible input in the listening class. The more the learner inputs information (listening), the more likely he will be able to output (speaking). (Krashen)
English listening and speaking classes in high school are of great importance to the cultivation of the learners’ ability to listen and speak. Listening texts in the high school English textbooks are usually brief and the topics are very simple. This gives the learners more time to prepare and discuss among themselves some of the topics relating to the material they are going to use. If they can do this before they list
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en, they can then undertake some oral composition or even continue debating if possible. This is beneficial to the expansion of their range of knowledge and the improvement of their ability of thinking and reasoning in English.
ii Reading. Reading includes personal reading and reading aloud as well as listening and reading. For most learners, the main purpose in learning English is to read--to get information. In the past, reading was thought to be the main or even the only purpose for learning English. Now this is not necessarily the case, however, reading still takes the greater part of examinations. So it has maintained its importance.
Reading competence should be based on the level of linguistic knowledge of the learners. They often have some difficulty in improving their reading ability. This difficulty results not only from their method of learning, but mostly from their lack of basic knowledge about grammar, sentence structures, parts of speech, tense, voice, non-predicating verbs and so on. Also they are lacking in vocabulary and some background knowledge of the English-speaking countries.
Cultural background knowledge is a very important basis on which the learners can improve their reading ability. As the high school period is the elementary period (Junior High School) and the period from elementary to middle level (Senior High School) for teaching, the introduction of cultural background knowledge is of great importance. (Ge Bingfang)
During the course of reading, the reader does not get the information he wants passively, but forecasts and understands the meaning of the text with the help of this background knowledge. Cultural background knowledge can be gained through classroom teaching, extracurricular books, extracurricular activities, conversations and lectures given by foreign teachers, movies, televisions and so on.
The “Schema Theory” holds that people can’t understand newly emerging concepts and ideas without connecting to known concepts and personal experiences, which are the two essentials of background knowledge. Our understanding and explanation of newly emerging information depends much on the existing schema. The inputting information must be in coherence with them. (Wang Chuming)
Intensive reading and extensive reading are the two aspects of reading. The former should focus on the linguistic knowledge (syntax, vocabulary, rhetoric, etc.) and it can lay some foundation for the latter. The latter should focus on expanding the learners’ scope of knowledge, enlarging their vocabulary and cultivating their reading skills. The teacher should train the learners in the skills of skimming, scanning and global reading. The real sense of reading is a delicate unity of intensive reading and extensive reading.
Cloze test, error correction and writing training are some necessary supplements of reading. These kinds of discourse training relate much to comprehension and are quite beneficial to the improvement of the learners’ reading ability. It is necessary to lead, instruct and supervise the learners while reading texts. Further reading exercises can be given as homework for them to finish independently after school. Reading comprehension then means the ability to fully apply and use the language.
There are some other factors that influence reading ability, such as the type of material, the reading quantity, the level of ability in one’s mother tongue, the individual learner’s personality, reading skill and strategy, etc. The teacher should attach much importance to the everyday training and test the result timely.
iii Writing. Like reading, writing belongs to the discourse level but they function differently. Reading is inputting and writing belongs to outputting. The writer holds that writing can be described as productive. Writing ability should include writing of all types: letters, telegrams, diaries or even poetry and novels. But high school writing should begin from such very basic forms as sentence-combining and sentence-making and then gradually transit to the discourse level with connections to different writing styles. During this period, the teacher may encourage some guided writing, note-making, outlining, or even cloze test.
The importance of comprehensible input should be greatly emphasized. Grammar can be taught very well but perhaps not writing. Maybe somebody will ask why some learners can’t write at all, some write incomprehensibly and some write simple but why others can write pretty well. Perhaps the psycholinguist Eric Lenneberg can give a satisfactory answer. He compared this phenomenon in writing to that in swimming: Somebody can’t swim at all, some can only swim badly but some can swim quite well. (Brown)
In the writing classes, teachers can divide the students into different groups according to their language levels and have them do group work. In this way, they can help each other with structure and word choice before they really begin to write. While commenting on their work, the teacher may pay special attention to “pidgin mistakes”.
Every language is a tool to help a nation explore and perfect his own world. The system of a particular language reflects the way in which a people explore their world, the history of their nation, and the way they trace their cultural development. For a foreign language learner, the knowledge that he has of his mother tongue will greatly influence his understanding and acceptance of another language. (Dai Weidong, Shu Dingfang) We must try to help the learners weaken the influence of their mother tongue in foreign language learning. Besides choosing some good topics for writing, we can also choose suitable background knowledge and reading exercises as supplements to improve the learners’ writing ability.
iv Translating. Many teachers in high schools consider translation a very important way of teaching English. But the writer doesn’t agree. Perhaps it can be done as a supplementary exercise, because there is so much difference in interpreting English from/to Chinese. The writer holds that while learning a foreign language, one must try his best to forget his own language. Depending too much on translating will make the learners rely too much on their mother tongue. This is very harmful to foreign language learning.
Ultimately translation can be considered as an excellent method of enhancing the learners’ ability to apply and interpret the foreign language but not before a high level of English competency is achieved.
VII Communicative competence. In order to keep up with the development of our improving national economy and our entry into the WTO, we need to improve the learners’ ability to communicate. The “Pendulum Phenomenon” in English teaching and learning in China suggests that we should lay stronger emphasis on improving the learners’ communicative competence. (Ma Tao)
The teacher has the responsibility to teach the learners how to use English through the Internet because the learners’ purpose in taking English is as a tool to know the world, to get all kinds of information and to better express themselves. And this kind of method should necessarily be based not only on English culture but that of other English-speaking nations. IE, the U.S.A, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
English teaching must emphasize the practicality of the language and the learner is the main practitioner of this learning. The learners acquire linguistic and communicative competence through practice that is then transformed into communicative competence. During this period, the teacher can study the psychological characteristics of the learners’ learning to decide the way of teaching.
The best way to develop the learners’ interest in learning and to create good learning habits is to help them construct their own models of learning through listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating together. This will construct a good learning atmosphere. Further more, teaching can make good use of the advanced mixed media that will expand the learners’ range of knowledge. Practicing the skills of watching, listening and speaking within a productive environment will stimulate the learners’ interest and enthusiasm.
Real communication activities should be completed by the learners themselves. While organizing pair/group work, we can let the groups practice together and then ask various pairs/groups to model their competence in the front of the class. One point to be emphasized is the need to prevent the learners from relying too much on teacher involvement.
The teacher could try to do as follows: 1. Strengthen the learners’ confidence in learning and cultivate their independence. 2. Make the task of the activity clear to the learners at the very beginning. 3. Adjust the degree of difficulty: it should suit the level of the learners’ ability. 4. Offer reasonable and encouraging comments on the learners’ activity.
Even if the task is somewhat difficult, the teacher should interfere as little as possible, for the teacher’s interference may confuse the learners’ enthu
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siasm. But this doesn’t mean that the teacher should just stand by and do nothing. If the learners meet some difficulty or have differing opinions, the teacher can help them resolve their dispute. At this time, the teacher is a psychological support for the learners, especially for those who are not so independent. And while commenting on their results, the teacher should pay attention to the strengths and weakness for later analysis and improvement.
In a word, the teacher is not a judge, but an organizer, a co-operator and a supervisor. A language teacher should mainly try to stimulate the learners’ non-intellectual factors and their interest in the process of English learning and encourage timely reflection from the learners. But the question remains is that requirements can’t be too high, for their linguistic knowledge is limited. If the requirements are suitable, the learners could make good progress step by step. And at first, progress or success, even if it is very little in English learning, can stimulate great interest, enthusiasm and motivation. (Liu Daoyi).
Let’s take as an example - SEFC BOOK 3B, Lesson90 In preparation for the lesson, we can try to find pictures of some ancient sights like the picture in the textbook, which is a place called Lascause in France. We can then make good course ware appropriate to the text and as well, use some material from the Internet. Also we can talk some local (Chinese) places of interest and make a revision of the previous lesson to create an easy, harmonious environment suitable for communicative practice.
Then comes listening, reading and comprehension of the whole text. During a discussion of comprehensive problems, we can have the students do pair/group work. Some keywords, details and discourse markers from the text can help the students easily comprehend the text.
In the paraphrasing period, we can use interesting pictures or/and music for the 11 phrases and sentences in the text. Now the students will feel a real atmosphere of English.
During the practicing period, the teacher can walk through the classroom and guide the students’ communication. The students watch, listen, read, speak and think throughout the entire process, so they will have a greater involvement in the lesson. The students’ participation takes the greater part of the lesson time and in this way, the students’ communicative ability of the language can be strengthened and widened.
VIII Conclusion. In a word, adapting and improving the existing quality-oriented education is urgent within the TEFL context. It should be based on the learners’ present physical and psychological condition. The school and the teacher should have an accurate concept of quality-oriented education. Thus allowing the learners to develop their English linguistic competence and to develop their ideal and psychological qualities. Communicative competence will develop through the practice of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. Further more, the teacher should make good use of advanced teaching means and methods to create a good communicative atmosphere, thus helping the learners broaden their knowledge and in this way, the learners can develop towards a sound English language competency.
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