论文总字数：34762字

摘 要

随着信息时代和经济全球化的发展，英语成为一门重要国际交流工具。小学英语教育作为英语教育的基础，应给予足够的重视。但由于地理位置及人文坏境等因素，乡村英语教学正面临着学生积极性不高，语言综合能力较弱，学习资源较少等弊端，其教学处于落后地位。因此探寻小学英语教学方法，提高乡村小学英语教育是英语教学的重要任务。活动教学法依据教学要求和学生的身心发展特点，将有效的活动融入英语课堂教学中，从而提高学生英语综合能力。本文分析了活动教学法的意义，探讨了其在教学中的实际应用，认为该方法对提高农村英语教学质量有明显的促进作用。

关键词：活动教学法；乡村小学；英语教学

Content

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 Definition of activity-based approach 2

2.2 Theoretical basis of activity-based approach 2

2.3 Previous studies at home and abroad 3

3. Research Methodology 4

3.1 The aim of the research 4

3.2 Research subjects 4

3.3 Research instruments 5

3.4 Research procedures 6

3.5 Results and discussion 8

4.Conclusion 10

4.1 Major Findings 10

4.2 Limitations and suggestions 11

4.3 Implications for further research 11

Works Cited 13

Appendix I Questionnaire 15

Appendix II Interview 18

1. IntroductionWith the development of information age and globalization of economic activities, English has become an international communication tool and the most widely used language in the world. It is of great necessity for people to grasp English well. Primary English teaching, as the elementary English teaching, is the basis for further teaching. Therefore, more attention should be paid to. With the implementation of education reform, much importance has been attached to primary English teaching. However, there are still some problems in rural English teaching classes due to the teacher-centred teaching method, which leads to rural English teaching lagging behind. In current rural English teaching, primary teachers tend to impart knowledge and ignore the characteristic of English as an applied subject. In order to complete the teaching task and examination , teachers only pay attention to words, grammar, sentences, which leads to the phenomenon of ‘Dumb English’. Therefore, it is urgent to change the method of rural primary English teaching. By using activity-based approach in rural English teaching, teachers will give students more and more opportunities to participate in English classes and their English learning initiative and poor language comprehensive ability can be improved more effectively and significantly. Many scholars from both home and abroad make a great contribution to activity-based approach in English teaching field, which lay a solid foundation for further research. However, many researchers study activity-based approach, focusing on high school English teaching only, and seldom focus on its application to rural English teaching. There is no doubt that high school English teaching is important, but primary English teaching is equally important too. Therefore, further studies on applying activity-based approach to rural English teaching are necessary and essential. This thesis tries to apply activity-based approach to rural primary English teaching to verify its effectiveness, which will pave a new way and provide a brand-new view to rural English teaching.

This thesis consists of four parts. Part one gives a brief description on the literature review. In this part, previous research on activity-based approach and at home and abroad are presented. Part two is about the application of this teaching method. Part three is about the instruments and research procedures will be shown in detail. The final part is the conclusion about this thesis. This part includes the major findings of the research and the limitations and suggestions.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Definition of activity-based approach

“Activity” is first proposed in Aristotle"s Category, meaning acting. Though “activity” is frequently used in foreign teaching, it has been used as a teaching term only in current decades. “Activity” is not only the meaning of itself, but it also has abundant implications. These implications are gradually expanded and enlarged. Majority of these implications are dated from the word “task” (Wang 1994). Quiet a lot of scholars have given a lot of different definitions. Piaget (1972) defines it as a kind of interaction between the subject and the object in the class. Harmer (1983) claims that it is a loose term which used to describe what are going to happen in the class. Hornby (2004) claims it is a thing that you do for interest or for pleasure, or in order to achieve a particular aim. In teaching area, an “activity” means learners’ active use of language knowledge in a provided communication condition. It includes the purposeful and active use of language knowledge and learners are required to call upon all language knowledge and abilities. As the core concept of activity teaching method, it involves both internal thinking and external operating. Activity-based approach is based on the word “activity”, which is a kind of teaching methods that absorbs the active ideas of movement and theories of Harmer, Piaget and other psychologists. In this teaching method, teacher will follow the teaching requirement and students’ physical and mental development to provide a suitable language learning situation. In this method, activities are the most important and teachers organize many interactive class activities so that students can take part in English class more actively.

2.2 Theoretical basis of activity-based approach

The thought of activity-based approach is firstly proposed by ancient Greek scholar Socrates. He let students speak out their thoughts by ways of questioning, answering between students and teachers. In European Renaissance Period, activity-based approach was raised by many humanism educationists. Since twentieth century, great importance has been attached to activity-based approach. John Dewey, the American philosopher, scholar, gave an analysis about activity-based approach. He explained that activity-based approach is an interaction between internal activity and external activity and this interaction consists of “assimilation, accommodation and equilibrium” (Piaget 1972). Jean Piaget gave a profound explanation to activity-based approach, which contributed a lot to it.

In China, there are a lot of theories and practice about activity-based approach during years of educational development. The main researches are as follows: Qin (1999) explained the dual activity-based approach whose basic is the task-based approach and balanced-based approach. Liang (2000) has discussed the relationship between activity-based approach and quality-oriented education. Finally, he found out that activity-based approach can be the theoretical reference of quality-oriented education. Peng (2006) proposed the basis theories, teaching models, and the importance of activity-based approach. Li and Wang (2003) studied the course, key point and the tendency of activity-based approach. They claimed that activity-based approach needs further research to keep up with the development of current educational development

3. Research Methodology

3.1 The aim of the research

In order to find out the effectiveness of the activity-based approach in rural primary English teaching, an empirical study has been carried out for a month. The research tried to find out the answers to two questions. The first question is that: Which one can better improve rural students’ English skills, activity-based approach or traditional exam-oriented teaching method? The second question is that: Does activity-based approach make contribution to improve the rural primary English teaching? These two questions are the foundation of this research.

3.2 Research subjects

Two parallel classes of Grade 4 in ChaMiao Central Primary School were chosen as the subjects of this research. This experimental study lasted for one month. There are 58 students in control class and 56 students in experimental class. The control class used the traditional exam-oriented teaching method and the experimental class used activity-based approach. Both of the classes were taught by the researcher. There is no obvious differences between these two class. Their age, gender and learning environment are quiet the same. Their English learning ability and English score in mid-term examination have no obvious differences too.

3.3 Research instruments

The researcher applied two kinds of instruments in this research, including questionnaires and interviews. This experiment consists of questionnaires and interview records in all. Questionnaires were invited to study the situation of students’ English learning situation. Interviews were designed to get a deeper and more comprehensive understanding about students’ attitudes about the aspect of English comprehension strategies, English teaching and class activities. All of these will be explained in detail in the following sections.

3.3.1 Questionnaire

The questionnaire is used to find out the current situation of rural English teaching. The content of these questionnaires consist of students’ learning interest, class learning situation and class activity participation situation. These questionnaires were designed to gather the students’ feedback on their attitude towards English learning. The researcher used the class meeting time to conduct the survey. Both of the students in the control class and the experimental class were required to finish these questionnaires. The researcher handed out the questionnaires and students filled in them and handed in them to the researcher afterwards. One hundred and fourteen questionnaires were distributed.

There are ten questions in the questionnaire. Question1 to question 4 are designed to explore the students’ attitude towards English and the interest in English learning. Question 5 to question 7 are designed to show the situation of students’ English learning in rural area. And question 7 to question 10 is about the English learning materials and learning environment. The specific questions and students’ answers to the questions will be found in appendix.

3.3.2 Interview

In order to find more useful information about the students’ opinions of English learning in rural primary school, an interview is implemented. These questions were not only designed beforehand, but gradually produced in the process of face-to-face and one-to-one interview. The main task of interview is try to understand the deep meaning of what interviewees say.

The interview was arranged on March 25st, 2018. Six students from the experimental class were selected to have an independent interview respectively. The aim of this interview is to find out students’ attitude and opinions on activity-based approach, and whether activity-based approach have more benefits than the traditional exam-oriented teaching approach on students’ English learning. Questions in the interview are mainly open questions about students’ personal ideas about activity-based approach, English teaching, etc. Before taking the interview of the six interviewees, the researcher stated the significance and purpose of this interview. During the interview, the researcher used the recording pen to record students’ answers. After the interview, the researcher transformed their main ideas into written form.

3.4 Research procedures

The application of activity-based approach consists of procedure of activity-based approach and practical guides to the activities in class. In past time, teachers tend to be the centre of the whole class. However, activities can reduce the dominance of teacher and add the students’ enthusiasm to participate in the activity, which is greatly useful for class teaching. Teachers can put the ideas of textbook to the related activities. Teachers should find out the best way to use textbooks, and they should never let the textbook use them (Harmer 1983). In foreign language teaching, there are some practical activities: presentation, brainstorm, game, group discussion, pair work, interview, role-play, debate, question period and so on. Most of the activities are displayed in the following table.

Table—Class Activities

Both the control class and the experimental class have four English lessons once a week. There are no extra learning materials in the control class. Their learning material is the textbook and exercise book. Under the exam-oriented teaching method, the control class was arranged as usual, composed of three stages: pre-learning class, while-learning class and post-learning class. At the first stage, the teacher showed the words, phrase and sentences that students should understand in this class in the blackboard. At the second stage, the teacher let students read after her again and again, and show them the main knowledge what they need to learn in this lesson and then asked students to recite the words, phrases and sentences. At the last stage, the teacher asked students to complete the exercises in the exercise book and checked the answer.

The experimental class was arranged under the activity-based approach. The process consisted three stages and the approach is different from the usual, and the stages of experimental class is different from the control class too.

At the first stage, teacher presented the teaching contents and asked the students to guess what they would learn in this class (brainstorming). After students’ presentation, the teacher showed the teaching aims and learning objectives of this class to make the students know what they would be supposed to pay attention to in this class. After that, teacher played an English song or organize a game, which contain some words they need to understand. In the form of the song and the game, the teacher introduced and taught words more easily, stimulating students’ interest in learning (game). Before the class, students had a general view what they would learn in this class.

At the second stage, teacher showed the picture and asked students to find out these things and showed the new words in the blackboard: shoes, umbrella, sock, fan, and then the new sentences “ How much is it /are they? It’s /They’re …”. After showing them how to ask price, the teacher let them work in pairs to ask their partners the price of things in the picture (pair work). Finally, the teacher asked students to feed back. By setting the situation to penetrate sentence patterns “How much is it/are they? It’s/They’re...yuan.” to help students understand better. This speaking and learning atmosphere was not tense but harmonious. Students were motivated to take part in the speaking and learning process. This procedure helped students to improve their skills of speaking and learning.

At the post-learning stage, the teacher checked whether students understood well what they learned in class. In this stage, some activities were carried out. Question-period is a good example. In this period, the teacher asked some questions to students. Instead of reciting the words, phrases, and sentences, several open questions were asked, such as “Can you show me how to ask the prices if you are in the shopping mall?” Role-play is also a good example. The teacher asked students to work in groups to make a dialogue. All these learning activities were used to improve the students language comprehensive ability and arouse students’ learning interest. Meanwhile, these activities helped train their learning ability effectively.

3.5 Results and discussion

The process of data analysis is complex and time-consuming. The researcher identified plenty of helpful information on the research questions. The data of questionnaires were used to find out the situation of rural students’ learning. The results of interview is used to find out the students’ attitude towards these two different teaching approaches. The experiment was proved to the effectiveness of activity-based approach in rural English teaching and the influence of activity-based in students’ performance.

Among the questionnaires, one hundred and fourteen were valid with the valid rate of 95.28%. The feedback of the subjects in the questionnaire and interviews clearly indicate that there are some problems in current primary school English teaching. The problems were mainly reflected in the following aspects.

Firstly, the enthusiasm of students English learning is not high. According to the questionnaire, regarding to “Do you like English?”, among 114 students, 73 students choose “like English” accounting for 64.0% of the total students. For the question “What’s the main purpose of learning English?”, 87 students accounting for 76.3% of the participants choose “To Deal with the test”. We can learn from the survey results that most students in rural area have some interest in English. However, their main purpose is to pass the examination. When asked “Can you use the English to greet to your teachers, classmates and parents?” Only few students chose “usually”. They are not motivated to study English actively and cannot take part in English class activities actively. Psychologists believe that attitudes are the intrinsic tendencies that inspire behavior, including cognition, emotions, and behavioral tendencies. Only with a correct understanding of English disciplines and positive emotion and behavioral inclinations, students’ initiative in English learning can be stimulated. It is obvious that under the current teaching format, English teachers do not mobilize the students’ learning psychology to learn English well. The students’ motivation for English learning is not strong, their interest is not high, and their teaching effect is not significant. Although teachers have taught so many English words but the students couldn’t remember them, and they don’t know how to use them correctly. The researcher believes that teachers should apply activity-based approach to English class, and have a purpose to carry out various English activities. The students’ curiosity and thirst for knowledge can be inspired through English activities. At the same time, activities carried out in teaching are aimed to train students to speak English boldly and establish self-confidence in self-expression so as to improve their interest in learning English.

Secondly, classroom activities are simple in form, with little students’ participation. According to the question “Have you ever taken part in English games in class ?”, only 14 students choose “usually”，consisting for 12.2% of the whole students. From the survey data, it can be shown that teachers conduct a single form of English activities while they are teaching English. Only a very small number of students participated in the activities which will inevitably lead to boring classroom teaching and students’ tired of studying. Meanwhile, under this situation, students have fewer opportunities to participate in class activities and language exercises. Such English teaching is unsuccessful as there are no appropriate activities to motivate students to use and absorb the knowledge taught by teachers. There was an educator who once said ‘just let me do it. I heard it, but then I forgot. I saw it, and then I remember it. I did it, and I will know it.’ The activity-based approach is adopted to design activities according to students’ learning need, allowing them to understand knowledge and use English they learn in activities so as to have a good command of knowledge.

Last but not least, the lack of English learning materials in rural primary schools is very serious. Only 11.4% students have more than 3 learning materials. Among these students, 63.1% students have no chance to contact the English films or English cartoons. From the survey results, we can learn that rural primary school students lack learning resources and that the English textbook is the only source of their learning. However, in English learning, it is not enough to only rely on 40-minute teaching at class. It is difficult to learn English well if students only rely on an English textbook. The researcher thinks that activities-based approach can enrich students’ learning materials. The teaching method requires that the activity design should be open, and the content and the form of the activity design should be diversified as well. For example, teachers can organize some English song contests, English recitations, English transcripts, English speaking corners and other activities make students take part in English activities. In addition, teachers can also dress up classroom with students in Western festivals such as Christmas and Halloween. Students can experience western culture in the festival and experience Western life. Learn English in a situation can make students become more interested in English. Students communicate with each other in the activities conducted by teachers and learn from each other to gain knowledge.

After one-month experiment, students in the experimental class have changed their attitudes to English learning. Students in the experimental class claimed that English learning with class activities is interesting, and they have gotten a lot of fun in English class. In addition, they have more chances to communicate with their English teacher and classmates. Under this teaching method, students took part in class activities more actively. Most of them dare to express their own points in English, and have better performance than before. While the students in the control class claimed English learning is still very boring. Few of them are willing to communicate with teachers. Students in the experimental class are more willing to do English homework. What’s more, the accuracy of their homework is higher than students in the control class too. Due to the fact that activity-based approach is in line with students’ psychological development characteristics and cognitive rules, so the learning atmosphere in the experimental class is more active.

4. Conclusion

The most significant conclusion of this thesis is that activity-based approach may play an important role in rural primary English teaching. After this research, we have found out some findings. Activity-based approach can improve students’ English learning skills and communicative performance than traditional exam-oriented teaching approach. In addition, activity-based approach has a great influence on students’ learning interest, which is insufficient under the traditional exam-oriented class teaching. While under the activity-based approach, students tend to take part in class activities more frequently. All these finding are expected to be helpful to rural English teaching.

4.1 Major Findings

With the aim of proving the effectiveness of the activity-based approach in rural English teaching, this research has discussed the great link between activity-based approach and students’ English learning performance. In addition, the application of different teaching activities in learning class are also discussed. Major findings is shown as follows.

First and foremost, activity-based approach can improve students’ English learning skills and communicative performance more effectively than traditional teaching approach. After the experiment of one month, students from the experimental class get higher scores than students in the control class. The research showed us that activity-based approach can improve students’ English learning performance. And the students’ attitudes towards the English have also been changed.

Second, activity-based approach makes contribution to improving the rural primary English teaching. From the research, we can learn that most students in the experimental class have better performance in English than students in the control class. After the experiment, students tend to be active in English class, and take part in class activities more frequently. Thus, activity-based approach plays an important role in improve rural primary English teaching.

4.2. Limitations and suggestions

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