浅谈小学英语教学中的新课导入

论文总字数：28188字

摘 要

小学英语教学是教育的一个重要的组成部分，通过小学英语教学,教师可以将英语基础知识传达给学生，同时锻炼学生听说读写的能力。在小学英语教学的过程中，教师还可以对学生进行思想教育并且帮助学生养成健康的价值观。在小学英语教学中，教师应当注意激发学生们对学习英语的兴趣并且让学生主动的学习英语，这就需要课前有充分的导入。小学英语教学中的新课导入会给课堂教学质量带来直接的影响。一个好的导入可以引起学生的学习兴趣以及改善课题效率。在这一阶段，教师应当充分利用不同的教学资源，例如多媒体，图片等将新课导入。教师也可以利用学生们大胆幽默的表演来导入新课。本文旨在帮助小学英语教师认识到导入在课堂教学中的重要性，并且让教师可以改善教学技巧。

关键词：英语教学；小学；课的导入；课堂教学

Contents 

1.Introduction 1

2.Literature Review 1

2.1 Definition of lead-in 1

2.2 Previous research 2

3.The Function of Lead-in 3

3.1. Arousing students’ interest 4

3.2. Creating a favorable learning atmosphere 5

3.3 Clearing the teaching purpose 5

4. The Application of Lead-in in English Class 6

4.1 Setting suspense or questions 6

4.2 Telling stories 7

4.3 Singing songs and chants 9

4.4 Employing the multimedia technology 10

5.Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

1.Introduction

With the development of reform and open-up process in China, many students begin to learn English when they are just seven or eight years old. It is known to all that English class is very important to arouse students’ desire and motivation of learning English. As the result, the author believes that an English teacher from primary school should focus on attracting students’ attention from the very beginning of each lesson and help them to enjoy learning English. In English class, the lead-in is the basic step in teaching.

As an old saying goes: "A good beginning is half done." An appropriate lead-in is able to attract students’ attention directly, arousing their interest and stimulating a good motivation to learn. Nevertheless, more and more experts discovered that traditional English teaching methods are not very appropriate for present education. Traditional English teaching methods would rather focus on teaching language knowledge to students from the beginning than focus on students’ non-intelligent facts such as interest, desire and enthusiasm. As a result, primary English teachers should make the best of resources, including pictures, videos and music to help students be willing to participate in English learning. The author believes that lead-in plays a significant role in improving students’ English learning. Firstly, this thesis will discuss some functions of lead-in, including the function of arousing students’ interest, creating a favorable learning environment and clearing the teaching purpose. Secondly, the author is going to present the application of setting suspense or questions, telling stories, singing songs and chants and employing the multimedia technology during the step of lead-in in English class. The application is particularly useful for teachers to improve their teaching skills and methods of lead-in.

2.Literature Review

2.1 Definition of lead-in

Lead-in as the first step of English teaching classes is very significant. Lead-in takes about 3-5 minutes, however, it has irreplaceable function. The aim is to motivate students to actively and energetically take part in classroom activities. This requires teachers to be familiar with the principles and the art of teaching and create a kind of atmosphere during the step of lead-in. Following definitions of lead-in is given by some experts from domestic and abroad.

Knowledge enters into the short term memory from outside environment. This process is called lead-in in a class. It refers to a method of teaching activity that draws students’ attention, stimulates students’ desire to learn, develops the sense of confidence, helps students be aware of learning aims naturally and builds relations between old and new materials.(Xu Xinquan, 2003:225)

Lead-in means an activity that the teacher organizes in order to help students have little impression on content that is going to be learned. Lead-in in primary school contributes to promoting students’ learning motivation.(Xiao Xi, 2002:26)

Lead-in is an activity contains interaction between the teacher and students at the beginning of the class within 3 to 5 minutes. It refers to some specific methods of passing on knowledge related to the subject. (Xiao Rong, 2001:38)

Combining recent researching findings with the practice of English teaching classes, lead-in can be defined as a step taking few minutes to present some related teaching resources.

2.2 Previous research

2.2.1 Research abroad

Roger Gower and Steve Walters researched some teaching skills by means of the step of lead-in. When the teacher taught a new lesson, he or she was supposed to use a variety of activities. It means that the teacher talks some familiar things with students. For example, the teacher can use animals, food, games and other things to lead in new lessons. In this way, a teacher can make students focus on learning contents immediately. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the class, teachers draw students’ attention in a concise and clear way. For example, the teacher provides a short task on the board for students so as to make them pay close attention to the content which is going to be learned, accordingly teaching activities are to be finished in efficient ways.(Roger Gower and Steve Walters, 1983:220-225)

2.2.2 Research at home

Some experts from domestic also did many researches on lead-in. The studies can be reviewed as follows.

Hu Shuzhen indicated that lead-in is a lecture. In her opinion, lead-in plays a significant role in classroom teaching. Lead-in can be the beginning of a class and sometimes throughout the classroom teaching. She also elaborated the principles and basic requirements of lead-in.(Hu Shuzhen, 1996:63)

Yan Chengli did a research on the optimization of lead-in art in classroom teaching. He proposed some principles that lead-in of new lessons and the design of lead-in language should follow and introduced the optimization of some lead-in methods in certain subjects of classroom teaching.(Yan Chengli, 1999:75)

According to the researches abroad and at home, it is easy to find something in common. Every expert believes that lead-in plays an irreplaceable role in classroom English teaching. The author also thinks that lead-in, as the first step of an English lesson, is important both to teachers and students. As a result, this thesis will discuss some aspects of lead-in based on previous researches. On the one hand, the functions of lead-in are introduced in order to help teachers realize the importance of lead-in. On the other hand, studying the applications of lead-in is valuable for improving teaching skills and abilities.

3.The Function of Lead-in

To some extent, an excellent lead-in can help a lesson succeed more easily. The functions of lead-in in English teaching are obvious, such as arousing students’ interest, creating a kind of learning atmosphere, clearing the teaching goal of the lesson, improving the abilities of listening and speaking and so on. But the author believes that the most significant function among all these functions is arousing students’ interest, because we all consider interest as our best teacher.

3.1. Arousing students’ interest

What is interest? “Interest is primarily understood as a phenomenon that emerges from an individual"s interaction with his or her environment. Interest is a content-specific concept, i.e., it is always related to specific topics, tasks, or activities.” (Dohn, Madsen and Malte, 2002:196).” Interest can be discovered in the relation between persons and activities. It is our best teacher and has a huge influence on stimulating students’desire to learn new English lessons. As a result, a successful lead-in should be interesting and attractive to students. Only in this way can a teacher draw the students’ attention from the very beginning of the lesson.

Take the part of Story time instruction about the activities in the park for example. In this lesson, the teacher needs to show students the view of a park and some activities that can be organized in the park. To enable students to be interested in the contents, a lead-in about parks in Huaian is designed.

T:Today, we will begin Unit 4. In this unit, we will go to some interesting places. Look! Here they are. (The teacher shows pictures of Park, Theatre, Amusement park, Zoo) Which one we will go first? Let’s listen to a song. Enjoy the song: It’s a beautiful day in the park.

T:According to the song, which one we will go first?

S: Park.

T:Yes. We will go to the park today. What parks in Huaian do you know?

S: Renming Park, Wudao Park......

The teacher prepares well for the step of lead-in. On the one hand, the teacher asks two interesting questions related to the contents and our daily life to draw students’attention to learning the new lesson. When the teacher shows some pictures of some interesting places and asks “which one we will go first?”, students are eager to know the place we are going to talk about today, then the teacher tells students to listen to a song about the question, so they are willing to listen to it very carefully. On the other hand, the question about parks in Huaian also has the function to arouse student’interest in learning. Students can take an active part in answering this question. From the example above, we can conclude that lead-in plays a rather important role in arousing students’ interest and has the function to make them participate in teaching activities positively.

3.2. Creating a favorable learning atmosphere

Most students may still feel excited, happy and relaxed after ten minutes rest. In this condition, teachers may find it difficult to teach new lessons. However, lead-in as the first step of a class shoulders the responsibility of drawing students’ attention to a new lesson and creating a favorable learning atmosphere. A favorable learning atmosphere can satisfy teachers and make students learn new English lessons more efficiently. So primary English teachers need to try their best to create a pleasant learning environment by using several methods which are mentioned as follows.

Skillful primary English teachers usually set a dramatic or vivid lead-in to create a learning environment and make primary students interested in learning English. Besides, the classroom, the school, the surrounding area can all be used as resources. An experienced primary English teacher tries to make the best of any recourses, such as beautiful flowers, interesting pictures or write some English sentences to decorate the wall.. Entering the classroom, everyone will be attracted by these beautiful flowers immediately and enjoy this kind of pleasant environment or atmosphere. For example, during the step of lead-in, a teacher teaches the sentence “what day is it today?” , he or she could write 1-7 on the wall, then ask someone to question and the other one answers by pointing the number written on the wall. When they see these numbers, they will be interested in answering teacher’s questions, as there is an atmosphere of English learning. As a result, lead-in is very significant in creating a favorable learning atmosphere. As mentioned above, lead-in contributes to creating a comfortable learning environment, at the same time, lead-in is a perfect step to clear the teaching purpose.

3.3 Clearing the teaching purpose

Teaching purpose is just like a lighthouse during the navigation of every lesson. Lead-in can make students be clear about learning objectives. During the shortest time, the teacher helps students sort out and position the direction of their thinking in order to make them search for materials related to the subject in their minds. Besides, the teacher can make students have a systematic framework about knowledge which is going to be presented and learned. A successful lead-in can help students be aware of the learning purpose naturally and have the preliminary impression on contents. This means that lead-in is able to create an excellent English teaching atmosphere, inducing the studying purposes and problems required to be solved. For example, when we teach the sentence pattern “when is your birthday?” , during the step of lead-in the teacher can present a wall chart to put all the months in it and write down all the names of students into the space according to the months of their birthday, then asking them “when is your birthday?”. When pupils look at the picture chart and thinking about the answer, and at the same time, the teacher’s action implies that the teaching goal of this class is to learn the new words about twelve months and the sentence structure “when is your birthday?” So, both the teacher and students know that what needs to be done in the next step of this class.

The functions of lead-in are introduced above. Next, the thesis will discuss the application of lead-in in English Class.

4. The Application of Lead-in in English Class

According to the former part, teachers can realize the functions of lead-in in English Class. An excellent lesson relies on a good beginning, and the beginning part is lead-in. It is known to all that, the first impression of things is deepest. So the application of lead-in in class can not only draw students’ attention, but also lead the lesson to a right direction. In this part, the author will discuss four methods of lead-in and their applications in class. They are setting suspense or questions, telling stories, singing songs and chants and employing the multimedia technology.

4.1 Setting suspense or questions

A competent English teacher is supposed to be a good questioner. Questions to students may help them participate in activities more actively. During the lead-in step, setting several questions is a good selection to start teaching a new lesson. In classroom teaching, first of all, the method of setting questions requires that all the questions must be related to the subject and the goal of this new lesson. The questions, serving teaching, should be the reflection of life, society and times. It is not a good way to design questions just for fun. If the questions are meaningless, we’d better cut them off. (Davies and Pearse, 2002:16) An effective teacher from primary school is experienced in setting proper questions before showing new materials about the lesson.

Unit 6 in 4B is an appropriate example to lead in a new lesson by setting suspense or questions. This unit talks about clothes. Teachers need to teach students words like coat, trousers, jeans and so on. Several questions can be asked to lead in the new lesson. For example,

T: What day is it today?

S: It’s Monday.

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