The Characteristics of the Poor Students in English Learning and the Measures of

【摘要】英语在人们的生活和工作中的用途越来越广泛，掌握英语是非常必要的，但是怎样学好英语且是一个问题，特别对于英语差生而言。下面有一些改进方法的建议。

【关键词】改进方法 动机 兴趣 目标

〖WTHZ〗【Abstract】〖WTBZ〗English language is used more and more widely in people's life and work. To master English is very necessary, but how to learn English well is a problem, especially for the poor students in English learning. Here are some pieces of advice about the measures of improvement.

〖WTHZ〗【Key words】〖WTBZ〗Measures of improvement； Motivation； Interest； Goals and objectives〖KH*2/3〗

Introduction English language is used more and more widely in people's life and work. To master English is very necessary, but how to learn English well is a problem that we want to know.

When students start the language learning, they are often motivated by dreams of learning the language well, however, this often doesn't last very long. So learning a second language is a difficult time-consuming process, and a number of variables concerning students' individual and differences are found to influence learning outcomes. If we want students to achieve success in English learning, it is important to stimulate students' motivation and to arouse their interest. Students who want to learn English well must establish goals and objectives. Helping students remember vocabulary and develop a sense of self-efficacy are essential.

1. The characteristics of the poor students in English learning

Now students are more interested in computer hiking than in English and in sports than in scholarship. What they only think over is to live happily at the moment, regardless of their future. The fact is that they don't study very hard. They don't want to teach by, but to find things interesting for themselves. They are being distracted by television and computer games. They would rather spend their time playing computer games than learning English. So we must stimulate their motivation, and arouse their interest in English learning because interest is the best teacher. If students are not interested in English, they will not learn it well.

Some students are very lazy. They only want to play with no goals and objectives. They don't know to learn English well. Some students don't look beyond the grammar and vocabulary, so we should help students establish goals and objectives in learning English.

Vocabulary is too difficult for students to remember. If students can't remember enough vocabulary, they can't study English well. They don't want to spend much time memorizing the words; even though they can remember it, they can't persist. So we have to help them learn how to memorize vocabulary by heart.

Many students don't have initial belief in their own self-efficacy. They feel lost in the language class and not sure of their capability to study English well. Students don't dare to answer questions because they are afraid that others will laugh at them. So many students give it up. English teacher must help them develop a sense of self-efficacy.

2.The Measures of improvement

2.1 To stimulate students' motivation

It is very helpful that good relation between teachers and students in the course of our English teaching.

I think a good teacher is students' teacher in class, but after class he/she should be students' friends. For teachers can share students' pleasure or disappointment, students will regard teacher as their friends. Teachers' love can reduce students' fear of learning English, it can also stimulate their motivation. If students love their teacher, they will have their lessons very carefully and learn it well. So teachers should get on well with students. Good relation between teachers and students. Good relation between teachers and students is very important for our teaching.

To the classroom with some motivating dynamics students need to develop autonomy not dependence. Therefore, be careful not to let students become dependent on your praise and other feedbacks. Rather administer praise selectively and judiciously, helping students to recognize their own self-satisfaction in having done something well. Give students opportunities to make choice in activities, topics and discussions etc. "We can either do this little cloze test or review for the test, which do you want to do?" help students to develop instinct motives. They feel less like puppets if you can involve them in various aspects of looking at their needs and self-diagnosing to some extent of planning lessons and objectives of deciding which direction might go in and of evaluating their learning. Strive to focus your students on interesting relevant subject matter content that gets them linguistically involved with meaning and purposes and less so with verbs and prepositions. Tests with some special attention from the teacher can be intrinsically motivating. Allowing some students input to the test giving well throughout classroom tests that are face valid in the eyes of students giving narrative evaluations. The tests can contribute to instinct motivation.

2.2 To arouse students' interest

We should organize activities in class to arouse students' interest.

Playing games in the students' favorite. Students can learn knowledge through playing games. The method is good. We often play games in class. For example:

a.Word games: at-the-ear-red-day-you-under…….

Look at who can write the most words in certain time.

b.Play the twenty-six letters, find out the words of all your learning.

Are, bag, cat, dog, feel……….

Look at who find out the most words.

Singing is a good way. It not only make classroom atmosphere active but also strengthen temperament and interest. Because the brain is stimulated by rhythm. Then it becomes excited. Students can easily learn knowledge. For example, the song "ABC", when students sing the song, they feel relaxed and easily remember the twenty-six letters.

Drawing pictures may save a lot of time for explaining the words and can easily and make students understand the language material. Drawing pictures can improve students' learning interest and through it teachers can organize interesting activities of communication. Acting is another useful way to help students master the knowledge of test and improve their ability to remember the sentences in the text. Meanwhile their oral English can get practiced.

2.3 To help students establish goals and objectives

At school students often seem to be required to study English only because it is on the official curriculum and there are tests to be passed. This can have a very negative effect on the students' attitude towards the subjects.

The goals of learning are not always explicit in course, sometimes texts seem to present only a sequence of short-term objectives. Although objectives are important in giving students a feeling of making progress, it is important never to lose sight of the overall long-term goal of English language learning to enable students to communicate effectively and as far as possible accurately.

The goals of learning English may be, or at least may appear to be, any of the followings:

a.To enable the learners to communicate in real English, both spoken and written.

b.To enable the learners to memorize English grammar rules and vocabulary.

c. To get the learners to memorize English grammar rules and vocabulary.

We use the expression real English's to refer to the English used both inside and outside language classroom: for example the English of instructions conversation, magazines and books.

The goal of English language is develop a general command of "real English" for use outside the classroom. If students can communicate diffectively when they are hearing, reading, speaking and writing "real English" ,they will manage English language situations they meet outside the classroom. But, most of the students in a class feel this goal difficult or impossible to reach because of many factors, such as the shortage of time. In fact, the goal is the most important for students, if they want to lean English well.

The first sign of good learning is the attention and interest shown by the students. If they voluntarily pay attention to it, they are very interested in studying carefully, and they can study well. Holding the students' attention and motivating their interest and their active participation are necessary in English language learning. If they do not achieve these objectives in each lesson, they are unlikely to master the elements and systems of English and use them in communication.

If communication in English is to be perceived by the students as the main goal of the course, English should be used for real communication in classroom as much as possible. This means introducing some of the English needed of geniune communication early in the course, for example, that needed for routine greetings, instructions, and requests. And depending on the overall objectives of the course, as much time as possible should also be given to realistic work on the language skills that the learners need to master, for example, conversation, reading comprehension, or written composition.

2.4 To help students memorize vocabulary

It is frustrating for students when they discover they can't communicate effectively because they don't know many of the words they need. In communication, vocabulary is more important than grammar. So we need to help students learn how to remember it. Learning words and how to use them is not a simple matter. On the contrary, it is quite challenging. Grammar at least seems to be finite. In fact vocabulary is infinite. Words are also more complex than they seems to be.

Memorizing hundreds or even thousands of words is difficult for students. "Learning is usually consolidated and even daily use of the words in communication. But students in a classroom often have to make a special effort to memorize words that they seldom use in communication. Sometimes it may seem to them that they need the words only for the test. So teachers need to consider carefully what vocabulary to introduce in each lesson and how to repeat introduced vocabulary. New words and expressions may be specified for each unit of the course book. If not, you can select appropriate vocabulary. Your selection of vocabulary should take the students' interests and needs into account as well as the general topic of the lesson.

You may have to deal with new vocabulary at any time in your lessons. When you know the specific new words or expressions will be used in a lesson for example "get up" and "have breakfast" and when the topic of your lesson is "taking about routine activities", you can be fully prepared. You can also often anticipate that certain their items might be needed, for example words for other routine activities that are not part of your lesson plan but students might want to talk about.

The aspects of new vocabulary items you may need to know about and students may need to learn are similar to those of other new language items, such as grammatical patterns or functional expressions.

Students who must be able to recognize and produce the form of a new vocabulary item also understand its meaning and use. They must learn how to pronounce and how to write the new word.

Remember that presentation of new vocabulary item will not mean that students have learned how to pronounce and how to write the new word.

Remember that presentation of new vocabulary item will not mean that students have learnt those items completely and forever. They only know words and expressions when they hear, read, say or write them. Most people are ignorant of or uncertain about many words in their lessons. It is very useful for students to read as much as possible and usually practice them in class.

2.5 To help students develop a sense of self-efficacy

"One important suggestion for teachers should provide their students a sense of achievement in class. Providing meaningful, achievable task can serve as an important vehicle in the development of students' self-efficacy". Teachers should make sure that students could regularly experience success and help students make realistic and objective expectation. Students will acquire a feeling for control and a sense of progress and their sense of self-efficacy will be built gradually.

Another big problem with students' sense of self-efficacy is their beliefs in four basic skills of self-efficacy of integrated skill by providing positive and informational feedback. Although self-efficacy is determined by previous experience, it is also subjected to the influence of several other factors. Therefore, teacher can provide informational feedback for students. When students believe their low speaking competence is due to insufficient effort and ineffective learning strategies rather than to lack of ability, their level of self-efficacy will be improved.

"Providing informational feedback may be useful in helping students enhance their sense of self-efficacy. Further developing students' reading skill teachers should make every effort to improve students' performance in four skills teachers should make every effort to improve students' performance in four skills especially speaking". For example, creating a better environment for students to practice in class contribute to the improvement of students' performance. Poor performance of speaking is due to lack of practice. So, teachers must make the atmosphere in classroom as much as possible. Let students open their mouth to practice. In order to develop a supportive and accepting environment in the classroom, teachers should avoid sarcasm and sharp criticism so as to help students strengthen self-confidence. In using English, help them relax through music and laughter, In such a relaxed environment, students will feel comfortable in practicing speaking because they know they will not be embarassed or criticized if they make a mistake.

In addition, teachers can encourage students to seize every chance and make full use of the learning environment to practice after class. For example, you can advise students to go to an English corner, listen to English radios and watch original English movies. Students will surely improve their communicative competence, break the vicious circle of imbalanced development of four basic language skills and raise the level of self-efficacy in integrated skills.

Conclusion

To master English is regarded as important skill that every young people should have it. English also useful in people's life and work. We know most business letters around the world are written in English. More than three quarters of the information on the internet is in English. It isn't easy to learn if we are not interested in it. A great scientist, Thomas Edison said: "Interest is the best teacher." It has been proved by many facts, so we should arouse the students' interest first. If students are not interested in English, they will not learn it well.

English language learning should be to enable students to use English effectively，and as far as possible accurately in communication. Establish goals and objectives in learning English. Vocabulary can't be neglected in English learning; we should make students feel interested in English learning and help them remember vocabulary.

English language is used more and more widely in people's life and work. To master English is very necessary. Learning English well is necessary for students, but for teachers it is more important to master good teaching methods because whether students can learn English well or not will mainly depend on teachers. I believe the poor students in English learning must be improved if you take the above measures of improvement.〖KH*2/3D〗

References

［1］ 胡春东.英语学习方法［M］.上海出版社 1999.

［2］ 戴军荣.中学外语教学［M］.上海出版社 1998.

［3］ Paul Davies，Eric Pearse。 Success in English Teaching。 （Shanghai Foreign language Education Press 2004）P4.

［4］ Wei Qiong Chinese Non-English Majors Beliefs Concerning EFL Motivation （www.Mode-linguistics-com/papers/2004）.