Design proper classroom activities in different teaching steps1

1、design proper classroom activities in different teaching steps摘 要：设计好多种多样的课堂活动，对提高英语课堂的教学质量，激发学生参与课堂的积极性，以及老师完成教学任务都有重要的意义。课堂活动是按照教学步骤帮助教师完成教学任务的重要手段。目前，英语教学中多采用“3p”教学法，即：呈现、练习、生成。本文就这三个教学步骤的不同特点和课堂活动的具体形式，所能达到的具体目标进行了研究，并讨论了如何在不同的教学步骤中设计好课堂活动。关键词：课堂活动 教学步骤 “3p”教学法 abstract: it is very important to

2、design different kinds of classroom activities, which will influence the improvement of english teaching quality and the motivation of students zeal to take part in classroom and achievement of teaching task. classroom activity is an important way to help teacher to attain the teaching effect accord

3、ing to the teaching steps. at present, 3p teaching model: presentation, practice, production is generally adopted in english teaching. this paper researches the different features of the three steps, the forms of classroom activities and how to design proper classroom activities in different teachin

4、g steps.key words: classroom activities, teaching steps, 3p teaching method design proper classroom activities in different teaching steps.introduction in order to motivate students sense of participation, teachers should organize various student-centered activities, which are centered on the teachi

5、ng content. in practice, we find that teachers just pay attention to the content which will be taught and the form of the activities when they design a series of classroom activities to attract students but ignore the differences between different teaching processes, that means, not all the activiti

6、es are fit for all teaching process, so teachers should design proper activities according to the different characters of each process. and at the present 3p model is more popular in english teaching, which include presentation, practice and production. each of the three parts reflects the character

7、s as understanding, accuracy and fluency. so following, we will try to discuss how to design proper activities in the three different teaching steps according to their particular features. .the features of 3p model and activities in principle, teaching processes of presentation, practice and product

8、ion correspond to strategies used by many good learners trying to acquire a foreign language on their own. they make sure they perceive and understand new language (by paying attention, by constructing meanings, by formulating rules or hypotheses that account for it, and so on); they make conscious

9、efforts to learn it thoroughly (by mental rehearsal of items, for example, or by finding opportunities to practise); and they check themselves (get feedback on performance, ask to be corrected). one sequence embedded in 3p is from understanding to doing. at the presentation stage, the learners effor

10、t is in grasping what is being taught; it is then practised at the second and third stages. the movement from stages 1 to 2 and 3 also therefore implies a transition from reception to production-from listening or reading in the first p to speaking or writing in the second and third. another embedded

11、 sequence is from controlled to free, particularly in the movement from second to third p. byrne (1986) and others associate different teacher roles with each of the ps. at the presentation stage, the teacher acts as an informant, providing learners with information they did not previously have. at

12、the second stage the teacher is often a conductor (as in the musical sense), pointing at students, as he wants them to speak, in the same way that a conductor points at the instrumentalists in an orchestra. at the production stage the teacher is a guide, facilitating but not rigidly controlling what

13、 goes on; making sure the practice runs smoothly, but not interfering too much. in classroom, it is the teachers job to promote these three learning processes by the use of appropriate teaching acts. thus, at the presentation stage, the teacher introduces new vocabulary and grammatical structures wi

14、th reference to their conceptualized use. at the practice stage, the lesson moves from controlled practice to guided practice, the students are encouraged to use what they have learned and practiced to perform communicative tasks. at this last stage, the focus in on meaning rather than formal accura

15、cy, these acts may include all kinds of activities, and may sometime be combined within one activity.1.presentation1.1 the necessity for presentationit would seem fairly obvious that in order for our students to learn something new (a text, a new word, how to perform a task) they need to be first ab

16、le to perceive and understand it. one of the teachers jobs is to mediate such new material so that it appears in a form that is most accessible for initial learning.this kind of mediation maybe called “presentation”, the term is applied here not only to the kind of limited and controlled modeling of

17、 a target item that we do when we introduce a new word or grammatical structure, but also to the initial encounter with comprehensible input in the form of spoken or written texts. as well as various kinds of explanations, instructions and discussion of new language items or tasks. people may, it is

18、 true, perceive and even acquire new language without conscious presentation on the part of a teacher. we learn our first language mostly like this, and there are some who would argue for teaching a foreign language in the same way- by exposing learners to the language phenomena without instructiona

19、l intervention and letting them absorb it intuitively.however, raw, unmediated new input is often incomprehensible to learners; it does not function as “intake”, and therefore does not result in learning. in an immersion situation this does not matter: learners have plenty of time for repeated and d

20、ifferent exposures to such input and will eventually absorb it. but given the limited time and resources of conventional foreign language courses, as much as possible of this input has to become also “intake” at first encounter. hence the necessity for presenting it in such a way that it can be perc

21、eived and understood. 1.2.activities of presentation proceduresin an effective presentation, teachers should make sure that the learners are alert, focusing their attention on the teacher or the material to be learnt, and understand the material accurately. the good presentation of new language can

22、be associated with two characteristics. one of them is clarity. the language point you are conveying to your learners needs to be clear. the second one is memorability. for the point to remain in the learners heads, it needs to be presented in a memorable way. and we try to divide presentation into

23、two parts: lead-in and input.1.2.1 lead-in as the saying goes: everything is hard in the beginning. lead-in is the first step of all the teaching sectors. if we design activities properly in lead-in, the whole class will attain unexpected results, no matter how boring content of this text. according

24、 to “the practice of english language teaching” of jeremy harmer. the primary aim of lead-in is that the learners form a range of expectance and interest form learning. in this principle of teaching, our teaching method should take “expectance” and “interest” as the dominant factor. and in this step

25、 we can try to use the several methods below:(1) memorize in the section of lead-in, we can set a scope, which relates to the text. students talk about their own experiences according to the scope, maybe the experiences are opposites from the content we prepared, but we also can get good teaching ef

26、forts if only integrate learners own experiences with the context. such as, “unwillingly on holidays” (new student english grammar book ), we can let students talk about what they are willingly to do and what they are unwillingly to do. write the answers on the blackboard after summing up: willingly

27、 unwillingly go home go to school holidays do a lot of homework go outing go to hospital ask the students “why are we willingly to have holidays?” because people can be happy and relaxed on holidays. but why dose the author use “unwillingly” to describe holiday? after the range of questions and logi

28、cal reference, students will attach importance to the text, thus, students can learn and analyze the content willingly and we also get a good effect in this class. also in “my first job” (new english grammar crouse), we can make a discussion of “my first * *”, some students will talk about their fir

29、st experiences on part-time job we connect the content and students experiences and then analyze the similarities and the differences between students and the protagonists experience. students will feel more cordial from the contrast. as a result, students become efficiently and positively to learn

30、the text.(2) assumption according to the requirement of quality-oriented education, creating an imaginary space is more important for students to brisk their thought and imagination, so giving some assumptions to students before the class stimulate their interest in learning the text, they will be w

31、illingly to study further. for example: before staring “atomic cars” (new english grammar course), we should point out that all the outcomes of the civilization of social technique experienced the same procedure which is assumption changed into reality, students can easily cite their fancies, such a

32、s, eatable paper, talking machines. and then lead to the assumption of atomic cars and we still need to solve many problems to make this assumption comes true. based on the guidance to teach the lesson, students can receive the content easier. the other example is “the swedish rock band” (jefc book

33、lesson 38), we can encourage them to imagine a concert of a rock band or an interview, let students assume what will happen? what should be the situation like? students imagine boldly about the situation with their extreme passion and they become eagerly to know the context, the next steps will also

34、 go smoothly, because of the proper activity of lead-in.(3) background knowledge many researchers have shown that the degree of students familiarity with the materials of text may greatly influence students comprehension about the content. its believed that learners gain knowledge when they are guid

35、ed from the already known knowledge to the unknown. in this way, the introduction of background knowledge tunes the students into understanding the context both physically and intellectually.however, an introduction of background is not a monologue of teacher without students involvement, even thoug

36、h the teacher fully knows the benefit of the background knowledge by asking questions. take “the merchant of venice”(senior english book) as an example; some questions concerning background knowledge should be brought forward as follow:a. what do you know about shakespeare?b. have you read shakespea

37、res works before?c. do you know shakespeares comedies and tragedies?d. do you think “the merchant of venice” is a comedy or tragedy?e. can you imagine what will happen in “the merchant of venice”? take “how i discovered words” (new college english, book) as another example:we could design questions

38、like this:a. what do you know about helen keller?b. how did helen mange to learn?c. could you give another example like helen in china? what are the similarities between them?in a word, introduction of background knowledge usually provides a satisfactory way of preparing students to learn a new pass

39、age, since the effort of answering gets them actively involved and curious about the additional information provided by the passage. 1.2.2 inputwhen introducing new material we often need to give explicit descriptions or definitions of concepts or processes and whether we can or cannot explain such

40、new ideas clearly to our students may make a crucial difference to the success or failure of a lesson. in this part of teaching, usually students receive the information by listening to tapes, reading text and listening to teachers explanatione.g.(1) its a pen (complete beginners)the teacher is with

41、 a group of complete beginners. she wants them to be able to say what objects are called. she holds up a pen, points to it and says pen . look .pen. pen as many times as she thinks it is necessary. the students have had a chance to hear the word.later, she may want to go beyond single words. she can

42、 hold up the pen and say, listen, its a pen. once again, she is giving students a chance to hear the sound of the new language before they try to use it themselves. later still, she may start asking the question: “what is it? (pointing to the pen). what is it?” so that students get a chance to hear

43、what the question sounds like.because many people acquire languages by hearing them first, many teachers prefer to expose solvents to the spoken form first (as in this example). however, some students may need the reassurance of the written word as well.(2) invitations (elementary)the teacher wants

44、her elementary students to be able to invite each other and respond to invitations. she plays a tape on which the following dialogue is heard: sarah: joe! hello. joe: oh hello, sarah.sarah: umm. how are you?joe: fine. why?sarah: err no reason (pause. nervously) are you doing anything this evening?jo

45、e: no. why?sara: would you like to come to the cinema?joe: yes, that would be great. well, it depends. whats on?sarah: the new tarantino film.joe: i suppose its all violent.sarah: yeah. probably. but its meant to be really good.joe: i dont usually like violent filmssarah: oh ok. well, we could go to

46、 the pizza place or somethingjoe: im only joking! id love to come.the teacher plays the tape more than once so that students get a good chance to hear the invitation language-some of which (the present continuous, vocabulary items) they probably already have known. she may say the invitation part of

47、 the dialogue herself and she may feel it is a good idea to show the students a written version. (3) when we explain the word “autobiography”, we can divide the word into three parts firstly, “auto” “bio” “graphy”, “auto” means “self”, “bio” means “life”, and “graphy” means “write”. connecting the t

48、hree parts of meaning, we can understand the words meaning easily “autobiography” is a work of selfs life, i.e zi zhuan.teaching grammar points is always a different point for teachers, we should make students understand the grammar points and distinguish these grammar points into class, and we ofte

49、n suggest that using deductive method and inductive method for teaching grammar.(1) the deductive method relies on reasoning, analyzing and comparing. first, the teacher writes an example on the board or draws attention to an example in the textbook. then teacher explains the underlying rules regard

50、ing the forms and positions of certain structural words. the explanations are often done in the students native language and using grammatical terms. sometimes, comparisons are made between the native language and the target language or between the newly presented structure and previously learned st

51、ructures. finally the students practice applying the rule to produce sentences with given prompts. the deductive method is often criticized because: 1) it teaches grammar in an isolated way; 2) little attention is paid to meaning; 3) the practice is often mechanical. however, this method is not with

52、out merits. first, it could be very successful with selected and motivated students. second, it could save time when students are confronted with a grammar rule which is complex but which has to be learned. third, it may help to increase students confidence in those examinations, which are written w

53、ith accuracy as the main criterion of success.(2) in the inductive method, the teacher induces the learners to realize grammar rules without any form of explicit explanation. it is believed that the rules will become evident if the students are given enough appropriate examples. for example, in orde

54、r to present the two forms “this is” and “these are”, the teacher will first hold up a book, saying, “this is a book.” he will do the same showing other objects. then the teacher holds up several books and says, “these are books.” after several similar examples, it is hoped students will understand

55、“these are” is used with plural forms of nouns. then students are invited to apply the newly learned structure to produce sentences with given visual aids or verbal prompts. the teacher tries to say nothing except to correct when necessary. finally, but optionally, the teacher may elicit the grammar

56、 rule from the students.it is believed the inductive method is more effective in that students discover the grammar rules them while engaged in language use. this is especially true with grammatical regularities, which are easily perceived, understood and applied.when we have finished explaining, ch

57、eck with our class that they have understood. it is not enough just to ask, “do you understand?” learners will sometimes say they did even if they in fact did not, out of politeness or unwillingness to lose face or because they think they know what they have to do, but have in fact completely misund

58、erstood! it is better to ask them to paraphrase in their own words, or provide further illustrations of their own.2.practice2.1 the function of practicepractice can be roughly defined as the rehearsal of certain behaviors with the objective of consolidating learning and improving performance. language learners can benefit from being told, and understanding, facts about the language only up to a point: ultimately, they have to acquire an intuitive, automatized knowledge, which will enable ready and fluent comprehension and self-expression. and such knowled