时间：2022-09-17 05:29:14
Oral Activities Design and Learners' interest
孔锡芳
I have been working as an English teacher in a middle school since1984. I taught many kinds of materials and I have taken charge of teach-ing tasks of two classes and there are more than 40 students each class.Although I have made much progress in my teaching work, there aremany prnblems in my daily teaching practice and I deeply feel my workstill need to improve in many aspects.
Several years ago 1 came to teach in Yixing Vocational School Ifound it' s more difficult to teach English well here. For example, mostof my students come from different areas in or out of Yiaing, and their.English is very poor, especially spoken English. Se the problem that theydon' t like speaking English is very obvious in my English leason. Ihope I can solve the problems that have troubled me for some timethrough the action research, so that I can apply my knowledge and theoryinto practice, which I have been learning all the time.
Concretely speaking, my problem is that most of my students don't like doing oral activities in or after class. In order to solve the problem,firsdy I adopted several scientific metbedsuch as the Analytic Methad.Socratic Dialogue, and Questionnaire to analyze my problem. Concreteitems were as following:
1.The Analytic Method
The anelytic method means a close examination of the way theproblem is stated. The purpose is to explore its consequences andimplications. The whole process of analysis helps me achieve a betterand dearer understanding of initial problem. This analysis led me to aseries of questions:
The phrase "most of" in Most o~my students don ' t like doingaral activitiea, made me think of the other side of the issue: Onlya fewstudents do like doing oral activities. This, in turn, made me think ofthese: Why most don" t, while only a few do? And who are the moststudents that don " t? Who are the only a few that do?
Moreover, "my students" is in contrast with "my vocational schoolstudents". This prompted me to make a chain of reflections:
what about most of my students?
Is also the ease that they don't like doing oral activities, either?
if, on the other hand, all of my stndents like doing oral activities inor after class, then my problem is actually caused by myself, not mystudents.
Probably the oral activities I asked my students to do were poorlydesigned.
Questionnaire
To find out what on earth students think of the oral activities I askedthem to do in or after class, I designed a questionnaire and chose 50students as my informants. As a result, I collected 50 questionnaires.The following was the table I used to illustrate the result of thequestionrnaire.
( 1 ) Dear students:
You are very hard at your studies. But 1 would like you to answerthe following questionnaire in your free time. I think it important fur you
and me in practicing and improving oral English.Please ticket the box next to the answer that expresses your opinion.
(
) 1.How do you think of doing oral English practice for your study?
A. Very good
B. Better
C. Best
D. No use.
(
) 2.How would you like your teacher to to give you her instructions?
A. First in English, then in Chinese. B. Give a demonstration first
C. In Chinese only
D. In English only
(
) 3.What do you feel if letting you doing oral activities in or afterclass?
A. Boring and monotonous
B. Interesting
C. Happy
D. Rcluctnnt
( ) 4.What topic do you likc to practice best?
A. Family
B. Friendship C. School life D. Bihday
(
) 5.Who do you prefer practicing speaking with?
A. One of your neighbors
B. Your best classmate
C. Your parents
D. Your friend
( ) 6.How can Oral English be possible for you to become skillful?
A. Doing more listening
B. Doing more reading
C. Doing more speaking
D. Doing more writing
( )7.How often do you tell your difficultoes on English studying to yourparents?
A. Often
B. Sometimes
C. Always
D. Seldom
(
) 8.What kind of oral practice would you most like?
A. Saying to myself
B. Making up dialogues with my classmate
C. Speaking to my parents
D. Pair work
The following was the table I used to illustrate the result of thequestionnaire.
From the figures, I could conclude that most of my students wereinterested in doing oral activities and aware that doing oral activities in orafter class were very helpful to improve their speaking skill, but theydidn't like the styles of doing oral activities such as pattern drills andthe dialognes according to the textbook and they hoped their teacherplayed multiple roles in doing oral activities.
2.Project Rationale
( 1 )The role of spesking class and its purpose――I wouldlike to give the speaking purpose of communication, making it asclose to real-life as possible. Classroom speech is not to be judged asperformance, but has the role of practicing for real-life communication.This means that the students should feel relaxed and free about speak-ing to each other in English after class. They should also see thatspeaking to their peers has a purpose and does not have to be evalu-ated by the teacher all the time. The emphasis should shift fromaccuracy to fluency.
( 2 ) The role of the student――I would like the students to feelthat learning is a collaborative endeavor and not a competitive one. Theyshould come to realize that they could learn from each other and helpeach other after class, not only in class, especially in speaking as it is nota skiB they can practice on their own.
( 3 ) The role of the teacher ―― Students should realize that the
teacher can' t help them all the time. And I can' t check them one byone after class. I wonld like to demonstrate these different roles so thatstudents realize when the teacher takes a major instructional role inclass. I would like students to get used to being responsible for their ownlearning and not depeedd onthe teacher often.
( 4 ) The type of taskg used in or after class――I think alloftheabove can he dealt with by designing and using appropriate tasks of thelesson. If students have to do information gap tasks, which require themto gain information from their partner by means of questioning and lls-tening and to give information to their partner by listening and respondingadequately to questions, then I feel they can be shown the value of com-municating with their peers.
3.Oral Activities Design
The activities were designed for Units 1-3 of English Book 1 forSocondary Vocational School, published in 2001, 6 by liangsu EducationPress. It was hoped that newly designed learner-centered activities couldenhance students' interest in doing oral activities. The activity plan and the details of doing the activities were shownbelow.Activity Plan
Details of doing the activities
For the teacher:
Explains the situation, checking understanding in Chinese necessary,then gives the students the worksheets and lets them read and checksthat the students can ask the questions correctly. Next demonstrates withanother example to the whole class, deals with any problems ofunderstanding, and get students to work in pairs. At the same time,circulates and monitors the activity.
4. Control and Target Groups
After I had finished designing the oral activities, I selected Class Ias a control group that referred to a group of students who would not beinvolved in the project implementation. At the same time, I chose Class2 as a target group that referred to those students with whom I would carryout my project in order to compare the target with the control group.
5.Project Implementation
Before implementing my project with the target group, I sorted outsome paper work first. Then I spent three weeks implementing the projectin my classroom from September 4 to October 20. For each week I wasscheduled to do these:
Teaching notes
Students' handouts
Diary
Audio recording
In October I implemented my project and processed my data tryingto gain scientific results. I had four sources of data help me to fred it out.l).Tbe previous questionnaire I did with beth control and target groupsfor the cause analysis of my initial problem.2).Observations I took in my diary.3).Audio-taped performance of my students.
The questionnaire I asked my 50 students to fill in immediatelyafter the trial of the oral activity exercises was over with the target group.
My post-trial questionnaire included two sections, Task designevaluation and Attitude change. And the questionnaire was answered
anonymously, that is, students did not write down their names on thequestionnaire. This is necessary because students might find it difficultto voice their genuine opinions, particularly negative ones, if they hadbeen asked to identify themselves.Questionnaire on oral work design and learners' Interest: (2) Dear students:
I know you are very busy with your studies. But could you spendsome time answering the following questionnaire? I how you feel in prac-ticing and improving oral English now.Please ticket the box next to the answer that expresses your opinion.
(
) 1 .After training for a period, what do you think abent your oralEnglish now?
A. I have made great progress.
B. I have made a little progress.
C. I am interested in it now.
D. I am too weak in oral practice.
(
) 2.Have you ever tried to train your oral English by playing funnygames?
A. Yes, many times.
B. No, never,
C. When it was an interesting topic.
D. Sometimes.
(
) 3. If the teacher asks you to make a short dialogue with her, whatwill you do?
A. I will fed happy.
B. I will feel shy.
C. I will feel nervous.
D. I will feel afraid.
(
) 4.Now you are studying in the vocational school, will you please tellyour friend about your school life to him/her?
A. Of course I will.
B. I will tell him/her in Chinese.
C. Sometimes in Chinese, sometimes in English.
(
) 5.What will you do in the future?
A. Imn afraid of making mistakes.
B. I will try my best to do more speaking to improve it.
C. Just so -- so.
D. I want to ask good students to help me.
The following was the table I used to illustrate the result of thequestionnaire.
From the figures, it was shown that the hypothesis had been provedto be correct. Therefore, by the research done on the problem that mostof my students don' t like doing oral activities in or after class, I couldcome to an intelligent conclusion: learners' speaking interest was in-creased by better- designed oral activities.
6.Project Findings and Discussion
At present, it seems to be a common phenomenon that most voca-tional school students found it hard to use the English they had learnedfor communication. As a vocational scbeol teacher of English, I felt verypuzzled and anxious owing to the limits of my own knowledge and ability.It was lucky that I participated the distant learning of China CentralRadio& Television University that halped to upgrade my English fromlower to higher levels, especially the course Practice Project Design whichmade me benefit a lot from it. Firstly. it helped me familiarize myself withsome research methods of scientific investigation that were potentiallyuseful for problem analysis such as the analytic method, Socratic dialogue,cause analysis, questionnaire, observation and brainstorming etc.
Moreover, by using some of these scientific methods of investigation, ithelped me learn to snlve a specific problem that I put forward most of mystudents don't like doing oral activities in or after class because it hadbeen troubling me for a long time and I was determined to find a solution.In the course of deaigning the project, I was familiar with a researchprocess. Secondly, the project aroused my wish to develop myself pro-fessionally on a continuing basis. I had access to a wide variety of meth-ods of doing this. One method was called ' action research' which wasdifferent from other more conventional or traditional types of research inthat it was very focused on individual or small-group professional prac-tice and was not so concerned with making general statements, it wasmore ' user-friendly' in that it may make little or no use of statisticaltechniques. The main function of action research was to facilitate the' reflective-cycle', and in this way provide an effective method for im-proving professional action.
Through the implementation of the project, the hypothesis thatlearners' speaking interest is iucreased hy better-designed oral activi-ties had been proved to be correct. In other words, I anmmarized thefollowing project findings:
( 1 ) Learners ' needs and interest: English language learning shouldbe related to the learners' personal needs and interests. It was whenlearners perceive learning tasks to be relevant to their own lives andinterests that they were best able to discover and create meaning in them.
( 2 )Learners' active partieipatian: Active participation meant thatlearners have as much involvement in the learning tasks as possible."Learning by doing" helped learners to be more exposed to English andenabled leerners to internalize the new language so that it became a kindof tool with which they could oommunieate, learn, think, and understand.English was therefore learnt most effectively when the learning tasksinvolved the learners not only in stating known facts but also in thinking,solving problems and exchanging ideas with others through their use ofthe language.
( 3 ) Communicative activities: Learners ' speaking ability could betrained in various kinds oommunieafive activities. For exmnple, cnnver-setions that provided learners with valuable opportunities to use languageas a vehicle for expressing and interpreting personal meanings; prob-lem-selving activities such as identifying the object/people, discoveringmissing information/features, discovering "secrets", communicatingpatterns, pictures or models, reconstructing story sequences, and con-sensus-seeking activities, and so on; information gap activities; role-play activities; presentation such as stury-teling, classroom report etc.
( 4 ) Receiving Feedback about learning: In order to develop thecapability to use English, learners needed to receive feedback about their
present performance. The motivation to continue learning and tryingcame from knowing exactly what the problems were and how to do some-thing about the problems. Giving a learner a low mark without giving anyreasons and guidelines as to how to improve destroyed motivation toimprove. Pointing out problems and giving suggestions for improvingwithout destroying confident was the essence of teaching.
In short, "Learn through use". It is never too old to learn.References 1、Gu Yueguo (1999), English Language Teaching Methodology,
Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Researeh Press
2. Gillian Brown & George Yule (2000) Teaching the Spoken Language
Beijing: Fareign Language Teaching & Research Press
3. Jeremy Harmer (2000) How to teaeh English
Belting: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press
4. Michael J. Wallace (2000) Action Research far Language Teachers
Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press 5.English for Secondary Vocational Students. ――Teacher's Book 1A, Jiangsu Eduengan Publishing House, 2006.