幼儿英语教育论文
Make English a Life-Style Course -- The Situational
Communicative Language Teaching In Preschool English
Education
Student: Zhuo Xulin
Supervisor: Feng Shuqin
A Thesis Submitted To Foreign Language College in Partial Fulfillment of Requirement for
Degree of Bachelor of Arts
Foreign Language College
Southwest Jiaotong University
May, 2005
Acknowledgement
I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to my tutor Feng Shuqin for her good advice and patient instructions. Also thanks her to share the very useful information. It is with her great help that I can finish the thesis.
I also want to give my thanks to my friend Jeremy. A. Kidman for his advices and information.
Then my thanks go to the Kid Castle for the directions of my article and the practice of my theory.
Finally, I am indebted to the Foreign Language Department of Southwest Jiaotong University for earnest teaching of all my teachers in the past 2years.
Abstract:
English is a widely used language around the world. It can hardly be expressed correctly and bring into full play of its core function of communication if it is separated from certain situation, therefore the
authentic language environment is the
key of English learning. To master a language, just doing some
language training is far from enough.
The sketch map explains why some
language learners are still inadequate in
proficiency with all the hardship they have experienced. In language study itself there are three basic factors, which may influence the language learning efficiency: linguistic knowledge, the ability of transferring and cultural background. Only the three factors are balanced could the language study bear fruits.
However, the traditional language-teaching method only emphasizes the linguistic knowledge while ignoring the context in which the language is used.
The reason why Situational Communicative Language Teaching Method gets popular in the English teaching to young learners is that it can create a realistic context like the one in which the language is truly used in reality. This new method uses a certain situation to make the young learners to understand the words and
expressions. (陈舜,
2004) ①
This article is intended to show how the Situational Communicative Language Teaching method works in the English teaching to young learners. (Here “young learners” refers to the preschool learners aged between 4 and 9.)
Key Words:
Situational Communicative Language Teaching method Psycho Characteristics of Preschool Children
Content
1. Introduction……………………………………… (1)
2. Young English learners‟ psycho characteristics … (2)
2.1 The golden period of young learners… … … … (2)
2.2 The Behavior of Young learners………… … … (2)
3. Situational communicative language teaching….. (3)
3.1 The drawback of bilingual English teaching...… (3)
3.2 Situational Communicative Language Teaching method ……………………………………………… (4)
3.3 The qualities of the teacher in the Situational Communicative Language Teaching……………….. (5)
3.4 To establish an environment for Situational Communicative Language Teaching……………….. (5)
3.4.1 the hard environment………………………… (6)
3.4.2 the soft environment ………………………… (6)
4. Situational Communicative Language Teaching in practice ………………………………………………(7)
4.1 Warm-up & review………………………………(7)
4.2 Sing together…………………………………… (8)
4.3 New Friends …………………………………… (8)
4.4 Let me try ……………………………………… (9)
4.5 Package …………………………………. …… (10)
5. Conclusion………………………………………(11)
1. Introduction
In recent years, more and more people have realized the importance of foreign languages study, especially English. Many of the kindergartens now offer English programmes. When teachers engage these young learners in English learning, most of them will use bilingual language teaching. But because of the limitation of the students ‟ vocabulary and comprehension ability, teachers have to use Chinese to explain the English words and expressions that the young learners do not understand. Thus, a problem appears. Most of the young learners who have received the bilingual language teaching rely too much on Chinese when learning English, which may hinder their development of English thinking and their future English study. To solve this problem, we have to find a new teaching method, which helps these young learners understand English without the translation of Chinese. Which is based on the Communicative Language Teaching method that is Situational Communicative Language Teaching method.
This article will first illustrate that the Situational Communicative Language Teaching method is a proper teaching method to young English learners according to their characteristics. Then this paper will explore how to practice the Situational Communicative Language Teaching method in the actual classroom. A lesson is offered in the last part to exemplify the Situational Communicative Language Teaching method.
2. Young English learners’ psycho characteristics To discuss the Situational Communicative Language Teaching method, we have to talk about the Psycho Characteristics of the young English learners first.
The young English learners we are discussing here are those aged form 4 to 9 years old. We know there is a critical period to learn a foreign language, from 4 to 9. And our target students are just in this golden period. (Maria Montessori, 2002) ② It is the time that children are constructing their language structure.
2.1 The golden period of young learners
At this time, children are learning language by imitation. They imitate the people who are speaking around them. The most important thing is that they are not only imitating the words, but also imitating the way others are speaking. That is how children learn the language structure of their mother tongue.
In this golden period, the children can build not only one language structure and they can build another language structure, English in most cases.
2.2 The Behavior of Young learners
The young learners have aged from 4 to 9 years. They are very active and curious; they are easy to be attracted by the colorful things and
the things they do not know well. And they will imitate the way other people do with those tings, for instance, how to call them, how to use them, etc. But they are also very easy to be disturbed: “the 4 to 9 years old children‟s concentration can only last for 8 to 12 minutes.” (Maria Montessori, 2002.)③
In our English teaching, we should consciously employ the target students ‟ characteristics to benefit the teaching and learning process.
3. Situational communicative language teaching
3.1 The drawback of bilingual English teaching
Most kindergartens in china now offer English program, but due to the limitation of 4 to 9 years old children ‟s vocabulary and comprehension ability, the students cannot understand what the teachers are teaching. Sometimes if the teachers teach in a complete-English mode, the teachers have to explain the words the children do not know in Chinese.
However, the bilingual language teaching makes the children develop the habit of translating Chinese into English or vice versa in their mind. The interference of Chinese may slow down the students ‟ progress in English learning and later will impede their English study. Situational Communicative Language Teaching Method stresses on the establishment of language using environment. It is suitable for those young English learners.
3.2 Situational Communicative Language Teaching method
Most of the target students even cannot read or write in Chinese, so it is impossible to let the students read the grammar books when teaching English. However, when the children learn their mother tongue, they do not read grammar books to acquire it. They are immersed in a language environment in which they are exposed to their mother tongue all the time and they acquire their first language quite easily. So why cannot we transfer their first language learning experience to English learning? We can artificially create an environment in which the children use English like using Chinese in their daily life.
Situational Communicative Language Teaching Method creates a „complete-English‟ environment so that the interference of Chinese can be greatly reduced. Teachers play a very important role in it. Teachers have to guide the students in the learning process. To make the students understand what the teachers are teaching, the teachers can use some facial expressions and gestures to express their feelings and thoughts. By Situational Communicative Language method, even without the aid of Chinese the children can still catch what the teachers are instructing. Teachers also need some illustration techniques, picture drawing, for instance, in their teaching.
3.3 The qualities of the teacher in the Situational Communicative Language Teaching
In the Situational Communicative Language Teaching, teachers play a very important role of guiding the young learners to learn English. The teacher should first win the students‟ heart, for these 4 to 9 years olds are very straightforward. If they don not like someone they will try to avoid communicating with that person. If the young learners do not welcome the teacher, they would definitely resist any impact you want to impose on them.
Second, the teacher is required to speak fluent English, which means he must be capable of expressing his idea and feelings in English. Only in that way can the teacher teach in the „complete-English‟ mode. A teacher‟s oral English level is the most important factor in the teaching process, because the young learners will imitate his English speaking. The young learners will imitate almost every pronunciation and language usage of the teacher.
The teacher will never do if he is not good at acting with exaggerated and funny body languages or facial expressions to attract the young learners.
3.4 To establish an environment for Situational Communicative Language Teaching
The environment in the Situational Communicative Language
Teaching is divided into two parts: the hard environment and the soft environment.
3.4.1 the hard environment
The hard environment is what we can see and touch in the classroom, like the furnishings in the classroom and the teaching materials. These factors will directly activate the young learners ‟ interests of learning, so we advise to paint the wall with some bright colors and some cartoon pictures. Moreover, the furnishing in the classroom must be finely designed. All the furnishing in the classroom needs striking words to show the children what a certain piece of furniture is. These words can be painted in colors so that the young learners can pay attention to them. By this kind of way, teachers can teach the students how to read these words on the furnishings. Once the students have learned these words, they will not only remember the pronunciations and spellings but also get a deep impression of the objects in their mind. Every time they see the object, the right word will occur to their mind and every time they see or hear the word, there will be an object in their mind. That means they can understand these words with no translation in their mind and the children are trained to think in English. This kind of environment is very helpful for their future English study.
3.4.2 the soft environment
The soft environment is the language used in the teaching process. The English program designers need to provide a „complete-English ‟ environment for the Situational Communicative Language Teaching: all the tapes and children‟s songs should be English. In this way, we can have the young learners to learn in a „complete-English ‟ environment. That will be helpful for the young learners to imitate the language they are exposed.
4 Situational Communicative Language Teaching in practice
Here, I will give a demonstration lesson to exemplify Situational Communicative Language Teaching in practice. There are five main steps in my lesson: warm-up & review, sing together, new friends, let me try and package.
We always give the young learners some time for free activity before everyone arrives. In the free activity, they can do anything they like. They can talk with their friends or play some games with other students.
4.1 Warm-up & review
When I walk into the classroom, the students maybe are still playing their games and speaking in Chinese, so I have to catch their attention. I will spend several minutes exchanging greetings with every student.
Then I will play some little games with them, for instance, I will call a student‟s English name and the student is required to say his name and greet everybody in the classroom. Then I am going to write down the words we have learned last time on the white board and let them read after me to review the words.
The purpose of this step is to catch every student‟s attention, and arouse his or her interest in English learning. In addition, reviewing what has been learnt serves as a transitional phrase to new points. This process would last 5 to 7 minutes. If it goes beyond that, the students will lose their attention and the classroom will be jumbled like the time I walk into the classroom.
4.2 Sing together
After reviewing the words, I will make the students stand up and move their chairs to make a space for the next process. When we finish that, I will make the students sing the already-learned English songs chorally under my direction. For the first time we only sing the song and the second time, we will add some rhythmic dancing while singing.
By this step, I can make every student feel happy and energize classroom ‟s atmosphere, so that make preparation for the learning of new lessons. This step may take 3 to 4 minutes.
4.3 New Friends
After several minutes‟ break, I will hand out cards with the words in a new lesson on and guide the students to read after me. Then we will play the word passing game: I will pass the cards to one student and let he or her handle them to the next. When I say, “stop”, the one who has the cards in his or her hand has to tell other students what the words on the card are. We can play this game for 3 or 4 times. Then I will make them listen to music we are going to learn how to sing and then lead the students to sing with the music for the second time. After they can sing the song, we can add some rhythmic gesture during singing.
In this process, I bring in the new learning matters through games and songs. That will be easier for these young learners to accept the new lessons, and they are kept in a happy atmosphere. It will help the further teaching. We can spend 10 to 15 minutes for this process because it is an important process.
After we have learned the new words, expressions and songs, I am going to let them have another 3 minutes‟ break.
4.4 Let me try
At the fourth stage, I am going to divide the class into two or three groups, and then we will design a situation for the role-play game, for example, we set the situation of shopping. Some students play the consumers and some play the salespeople. I will first pick up a group to play the consumer and then change to the role of the salespeople.
During the process the other students are required to watch. After I demonstrate how to do it, the students are going to play the game group by group and I will stay beside and watch them play the game. If there is any problem in their expressions, I will correct them after the group finishes the game.
This process is the most important process of the four, so we have to use more time in this process, about 12 to 18 minutes.
4.5 Package
In the let me try process, the students play very happily and they are very excited. We have to make them relax and the best way to make them relax is to let them sit around and sing the song we have learned today. This is what we have to do first in the final process. When the students get relaxed, I will make a brief conclusion of this new lesson, praise and deliver a little prize to the student, who has made an excellent performance, and then review new songs again and at last say good-bye to each other.
In the Package process, we cheer on what students have achieved and the most important is that we will let the students finish their learning in a happy mood.
The demonstration lesson shows us how the Situational Communicative Language Teaching suits the young English learners‟ psycho characteristics in the teaching process.
5 Conclusion
We have seen from this article that the Situational Communicative Language Teaching Method is vivid and interesting in the teaching process. It pays more attention to the development of students‟ language ability. It stresses that English is a tool of communication not knowledge, so it highlights the importance of teaching the students how to use the language in reality. In addition, it suits the young English learners‟ psycho characteristics in the teaching process and achieves happy learning.
Through the Situational Communicative Language teaching, the students will not only understand how to use the language, but also know how to learn the language further.
Notes:
1. Maria Montessori, 2002. 《Montessori ’s Policy of Child Education 》, Lan Zhou University Press 29
2. Maria Montessori, 2002. 《How to Guide Your Child to Read and Learn 》, Lan Zhou University Press 256
3. 陈舜, 2004.《让英语教学生活化》, 个人论文著作
4
Bibliography:
1. Maria Montessori, 2002. 《Montessori ’s Policy of Child Education 》, Lan Zhou University Press
2. Maria Montessori, 2002. 《How to Guide Your Child to Read and Learn 》, Lan Zhou University Press
3. 陈文德, 2003.《教孩子喜欢学习:开启幼儿潜能》, 机械工业出版社
4. 陈舜, 2004. 《让英语教学生活化》, 个人论文著作