The Research in Optimizing Classroom Activities In English teaching

1、the research in optimizing classroom activities in english teaching摘 要：英语课堂活动的设计、开展，都是以让学生吸收、消化所学知识，以培养学生运用英语的能力为目的。从丰富充实的教学内容中获得有用的信息，在良好的英语环境中，学生的英语水平会有一定程度的提高。本文就以其为宗旨，阐述了课堂活动的优化对激发学生学习英语的兴趣、提高英语运用水平的影响，从而使读者认识到优化课堂活动的重要性，并对课堂活动的优化提出了一些建议。 关键词：优化 教学内容 课堂活动 教学原则 培养能力abstract: the purpose of design

2、ing or carrying out classroom activities is making students to absorb and digest what they have learned, and cultivating their ability to use english very well. students english level would be improved, if they have a good english environment to get useful information from enriched teaching contents

3、. this paper takes what is mentioned above as object, to state the influence of the optimization of classroom activities to stimulate students interest to study english, and improve their comprehensive quality. thus, readers may realize how important the optimization of classroom activities is. and

4、the paper also raises some suggestions to optimize classroom activities.key words: optimization, teaching content, classroom activities, teaching principles, cultivate ability1.introductionwe are in information society now; we face the globalization of worlds economy and the international competitio

5、n. it is no doubt that our society needs more high-quality talented person. education cant cultivate qualified talented person to our society until we achieve these aims. therefore, we need teach students to learn some efficiency methods and ways in order to develop themselves.the optimization of cl

6、assroom activities in english teaching is one aspect, which can help students to learn useful things and develop themselves efficiently. how to optimize classroom activities is a hot spot problem in english teaching now. therefore this writing is from following four aspects to discuss how to optimiz

7、e classroom activities.2.the plural patterns of english classroom teaching aimsan ideal english classroom teaching can provide such an environment to english study, which can supply more chances for students to use english, and make students to indulge into an english environment to carry on meaning

8、ful communication, and stimulate students to take part in communicative activities to solve problems and finish tasks. according to language study rules, take students as the main part to cultivate students study interest and motive their zeal. we should formulate the aims of english classroom teach

9、ing from following two aspects to show the overall and comprehensive of education, in brief, the plural of education aims.1.1 the language quality(1) making students to get language knowledge, which is the basic foundation of students ability to use language, such as, vocabulary, sentences, article,

10、 rhetoric, etc. (2) cultivating and developing students ability to use language, which is one aspects of students comprehensive quality, such as, listening, speaking, reading, writing, etc.1.2 comprehensive quality(1) developing students ability of study, communication, cooperation, participation an

11、d creation in english classroom teaching, which is one aim of the optimization of classroom activities.(2) promoting students scientific knowledge and general humane knowledge, which can show the overall and comprehensive of education.comprehensive quality and language quality aims are supplement an

12、d complement each other. and the benefits can be showed in the optimization of classroom activities.3. enriching and broadening contents of english classroom teachingthe development and change of teaching contents is paid more attention by teachers in the reformation course in our modern education a

13、rea. first, the resource of teaching contents has been broadened, teacher can teach students different knowledge not only from books but also can get some useful information from internet, english magazines or newspaper. and then the interdependence of different subjects is closer than before. so an

14、other important aspect of optimizing the classroom teaching process is enriching and broadening teaching contents.how to increase more teaching contents in class? there are two points should be paid attention by teacher and students. on one hand, finding out lots of useful and interesting informatio

15、n or knowledge from outside class reading materials, which are related to the teaching contents. it means that teacher should do more preparation before class. on the other hand, encouraging students to take more time than before to make conclusion after class, in order to digest what they have got

16、in class and collect some knowledge according to their own interests, then share them with teacher and classmates. in addition, enriching and broadening teaching contents in the right of current events, is also universally used in english classroom teaching which both teacher and students are intere

17、sted in. enriching teaching contents is one aspects of successful teaching. what is the standard of successful teaching? the standard of traditional examination-oriented education is accomplishing teaching task step by step. and modern quality-oriented education takes fostering talent as the foundat

18、ion. on the choice of teaching contents, the requirements of students cognizance and feeling are considered fully; teaching content and feeling are combined organically. what kind of teaching content can students digest easily? that is what can tally with the requirement and self-development of stud

19、ents.4. forms and features of organization of teaching activitiesit is universally recognized that the teacher-centered practice, though having dominated foreign language teaching for decades, has become more and more ineffective in classroom routines. yes, to bring the student centered practice int

20、o everyday classroom activities in terms of forcing language teaching especially in china, is still confronting some setbacks. one of the measures to tackle the problem is to truly apply effective activities to the teaching.there are two points that we should keep in mind before furthering our discu

21、ssion: activities that can produce real communication depend upon two elements: information gap and opinion gap, which actually construct the basic rules for all the activities to be discussed in the following; task-based activities, as most of the following activities to be mentioned in this part,

22、provide life-like needs for communication in which the target language learners find it meaningful to use the learned vocabulary, structures and patterns. all of these are one part of the meaning of optimizing classroom activities in english teaching. although this part discusses three kinds of acti

23、vities used in foreign language teaching, there may he still a lot more others or variations of the three that will certainly be of great value. miming activities, for example, are valuable language learning situations because they not only help students practice question forms and expressing possib

24、ilities but also train the students skill of observation and improvisation, and, furthermore, emphasize the importance of gesture and facial expression in communication. we can find how important the organization forms of activities from these three activities, and furthermore, we can know something

25、 about the feature of the activities.4.1 organization forms of activities adopting interconnected form activities. student1 teacherstudents3 student2 ( figure)in this classroom activity form, the main characters are students; teacher just do as director, judge, referee and consulter to provide usefu

26、l information for students in the process of study. through the interchanging between teacher and students, teaching benefits both of them. no matter teachers overall quality level surpasses students or not. in this way, we can change conclusion teaching as process teaching and use the principle of

27、elicitation method of teaching very well. we can cultivate students to analyze problems, demonstrate and solve problems flexibly and other a series of ability. take some different activities as examples.1.warming-up activitiesserving as preludes before more serious classroom teaching is introduced o

28、r sometimes being introductions of their own to the latter, warming-up activities have several functions to play. these functions reflect the general direction of the organization forms of different activities, and they go a step further to embody how we should make the optimization of classroom act

29、ivities.the first function is to get students to know each other. as we know, people have to work together in a group. it is advisable that they get to know each other a little at the beginning, (we can look at their relationship in the above figure.) once they have talked to each other in an introd

30、uctory exercise they will be less reluctant to cooperate in further activities. one of the pre requisites of cooperation is knowing the other peoples names. a second one is having some idea of what individual members of the group are interested in. therefore, one important use of warming-up exercise

31、s is with new classes at the beginning of a course or the school year. it is also advisable for teacher to join in the activities and let the class accept you as a person and not just as a teacher.the second use of warming-up activities is to break the ice. experienced teachers always have dozens of

32、 five minutes activities at hand in case their students happen to be too quiet to get themselves actively involved in language learning. a burst of laughter or a motion of physical responses mixed with brief exchanging in the foreign language being learned between students and the teacher or between

33、 students themselves are often very effective in getting students into the right mood before starting on some new project or task. once the ice is broken, the rest of the classroom activities will run smoothly.the third function of warming-up activities lays in brief introductions to the main activi

34、ties in which the students will learn new language items. in these preludes the students usually go over relevant learned knowledge related to the new contents, which are to be brought into the classroom, sometimes the success of teaching and learning a new language item depends heavily upon the car

35、efully prepared warming-up activities. although short and simple, warming-up activities may seem threatening to very shy students, especially to chinese students who have been used to the teacher-centered language teaching. in particular, exercises in which one person has to speak about himself in f

36、ront of the whole class belong in this category. you can reduce the strain by re-organizing the activity in such a way that the student concerned is questioned by the class, thus avoiding a monologue where the pressure is on one person only. students often find pair works the least threatening becau

37、se everybody is talking at the same time and they have only got one listener. depending on the atmosphere in the classes, you may wish to modify whole-class exercises to include pair or group work.most of the warming-up exercises are suitable for beginners because they do not demand more than simple

38、 questions and answers. but the language content of the exercises can easily be adapted to a higher level of proficiency. thus warming-up activities are also useful and often necessary for students of intermediate and higher level. so teacher should take notice of the function of the activity in dif

39、ferent class occasion in the process of the optimization of classroom activities.2.guessing gameseverybody knows guessing games. it is not only children that like guessing, adults like guessing too, as shown by many popular tv programmes. the popularity of guessing games can be explained by their st

40、ructure. both chance and skill (in asking the right questions) play a part in finding the solution. the outcome of the game tends to be uncertain until the last moment, and so it is full of suspense. the basic rule of guessing games is eminently simple: one person knows something that another one wa

41、nts to find out. how this is done is determined by an additional set of rules. these rules lay down, for example, the type and number of questions. the thing to be guessed differs greatly from game to game. it can be something one player is thinking of, an object seen only by one person, a word, an

42、activity or lots of other things.as the person guessing has a real urge to find out something, guessing games are true communicative situations and as such are very important for foreign language learning. they are generally liked by students of all ages because they combine language, practice with

43、fun and excitement. hence the optimization of classroom activities does not only optimize the forms of activities, but also the contents of activities, which can be full of fun, in this way, the activities can draw students interest, so that students could master what they learn more quickly than be

44、fore, thus we can reach the aim of optimization. before teacher tries out a new guessing game with class, teacher needs make sure that the players know all the words and structures necessary for the game. if not, a trial rule through the game may refresh students memories and show whether any revisi

45、on is needed before teacher starts playing in earnest. a trial run also has the advantage that the rules are demonstrated to all the players. another element to be considered before playing is the organization of the game, in order to guarantee that as many students as possible are actively particip

46、ating most of the time. if teacher is playing a guessing game as a team contest it may be necessary to damp down the very competitive minded. games are a lot of fun even if they are not played in order to score points.traditional guessing games such as “i spy something in the room or in my mind”, “c

47、offee potting” etc have been used for decades. however, variation is a vital ingredient of good games. teacher can try changing the rules of familiar games or doing things in a different order, and he would find that one game idea could be the nucleus of many new games. if teacher cannot think of an

48、y new rules, has a look at collections of games for parties or childrens groups. a lot of the ideas in those books can be transferred to foreign language teaching. careful tv watchers may find that some programmes on the screen can be extremely good resources of guessing games. it exactly shows one

49、aspects of the enriching and broadening teaching contents properly.3.discussion (or debate)discussion activities and consensus activities share some similarities, especially in that both of them are usually carried out within a group. but there is apparently a difference: members doing a consensus a

50、ctivities should agree to a final conclusion no matter how much different they are in their opinions while members doing a discussion or debate activity do not have to agree with each other, and in most cases they dont, each holding his or her own conclusion to the end. the main intention of discuss

51、ion or debate exercises is, of course, to get the students to talk in the targeted language and to stimulate their interest, imagination as well as logical thinking.in discussion activities, the students can deal with serious questions as well as play with ideas and language. nearly all of them dema

52、nd a certain degree of flexibility in the foreign language and are structured in such a way that everyone will get a turn.however, it is not always easy to get everybody equally involved in the discussion, because to express oneself clearly and impressively sometimes requires good command of the for

53、eign language and this could be very threatening to some less able students. that is why most teachers hope that they will be able to organize discussion sessions in their classroom, particularly if the exchange of opinions provokes spontaneous fluent language use. many find, however, that discussio

54、n sessions are less successful than they had hoped. this is one of the reasons that some discussion games can only be played by advanced learners. in order to make sure that everybody has a turn, the teacher could ask the students to hand round an object, take film as an example. the teacher starts

55、by asking individual students to name the last film they saw. did they enjoy it? was it funny? serious? violent? the replies he gets at this point will be fairly monosyllabic, but at least the topic has been introduced and the students are enjoying thinking about movies. the teacher now says that th

56、e class is going to concentrate on the issue of violence in films. is there too much? does it matter? should anything be done about it? he puts the students into groups. in one group, the students have to think the level of violence in films and what affects it might have. in another group, students

57、 have to think of ways of stopping the portrayal of violence in films. in another group, students have to think up reasons why the 1eve1 of violence in films is quite justifiable and uncorking. when students have had a chance to think of ideas (with the teacher going round to individual groups offer

58、ing help where necessity), he asks for an opinion about violence from one of the groups. when a student has given it, he encourages other students to ask questions about that opinion. he then asks a different student to say what can be done about it, and that student, in turn, is questioned. finny he asks a student from the violence isnt worrying group to disagree with the idea that violence in movies is a bad thing.the teacher keeps prompting in this way until the conversation takes off, with different opinions being freely exchanged. later, when the activity has run out of st