1、情景教学法在初中英语课堂中的应用情景教学法在初中英语课堂中的应用3The Application of Situational Teaching Approach in English Class of Junior Middle Schools . IntroductionSituational Language Teaching began in Britain in the 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method, called Communicative language teaching. This was pa
2、rtly in response to Chomskys criticisms of structural theories of language and partly based on the theories of British functional linguistics, such as Firth and Halliday, as well as American sociolinguists, such as Hymens, Gumpes and Labov and the writings of Austin and Searle on speech acts. Approa
3、ch Theory of language: The functional view of language is the primary one behind the communicative method, as well as theory of learning. Not a great deal has been written about the learning theory behind the communicative approaches, but here are some principles that may be inferred. Activities tha
4、t involve real communication promote learning, activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks. To promote learning language that is meaningful to the learner promotes learning Design Objectives. Students will learn to use language as a means of expression .Students will use l
5、anguage as a means of expressing values and judgments .Students will learn to express the functions that best meet their own communication needs. The syllabus Communicative language teaching often uses a functional-notional syllabus. Yalden(1987) has classified a number of communicative syllabus typ
6、es. Types of learning techniques and activities communicative language teaching use almost any activity that engages learners in authentic communication. Little wood, however has distinguished two major activity types: functional communication activities: ones aimed at developing certain language sk
7、ills and functions, but which involve communication, and social interaction activities, such as conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues and role plays. . Introduction of English Situational Teaching MethodIt is well known that English is one of the most important basic subjects in all kinds
8、of schools; it is regarded as the basic skill which qualified personnel should master in the 21st century. English, as a second language, the purpose of learning it is usually for communication, and communication involves all four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. And how to improve
9、the communicative ability of the students is a troublesome problem for teachers because of lacking of the language environment. So as a teacher, we should try our best to construct this environment includes watching, listening and speaking. To construct this environment, the effective teaching metho
10、d is Situational Teaching Method. Because this method benefits construct a good language environment, making students integrate theory with practice, and concentrating the students attention. 2.1 The Goal of Situational Teaching ApproachThe situational language teaching approach just follows this ru
11、le. Situational language teaching was originally called oral approach, which was developed by British applied linguists from the 1930s to 1960s, and it has provided guidance to many well-known EFL/ESL textbooks and courses, including New concept English written by L.G.Alexander(1967), which is still
12、 used in China and known by almost every Chinese English learner. In fact, most books on business English are compiled according to this approach too. The theory of learning underlying Situational Language Teaching is behaviorism, addressing more the processes, than the conditions of learning. Richa
13、rds and Rodgers summarized the main characteristics of the approach as follows: 1). Language teaching begins with the spoken language. Material is taught orally before it is presented in written form. 2). The target language is the language of the classroom. 3). New language points are introduced an
14、d practiced situational. 4). Vocabulary selection procedures are followed to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary is covered. 5). Items of grammar are graded following the principle that simple forms should be taught before complex ones. Reading and writing are introduced once a suffi
15、cient lexical and grammatical basis is established, while Situational Language teaching uses a structural syllabus and a word list. Structures are always taught within sentences, and vocabulary is chosen according to how well it enables sentence patterns to be taught. The practice techniques employe
16、d generally consist of guided repetition and substitution activities, including chorus repetition, dictation, drills, and controlled oral-based reading and writing tasks. Since the purpose of teaching a foreign language is to enable the learners to use it, and then it must be heard, spoken, read, an
17、d written in suitable realistic situations. Neither translation nor mechanical drills can help if they are not connected with practical life. The situational language teaching methods focused on the need to practice language in meaningful situation-based activities. Therefore, the situational langua
18、ge teaching approach continued to be part of the standard set of procedures advocated in many current British methodology texts 2.2 The Advantages of Situational Teaching ApproachSituational Language Teaching evolved in the United Kingdom while a parallel method, Audio-Lingualism, emerged in the Uni
19、ted States. In the middle-methods period, a variety of methods were proclaimed as successors to the then prevailing Situational Language Teaching. First, Professor of General Linguistics, emphasizes the notion of context of situation. It led to two developments in language teaching. One is the struc
20、tural syllabus (one alternative to it is the situational syllabus), which emphasizes that language is best learned and remembered when presented in contextual settings, and the other is audio-visualism (AV) which attempts to make language memorable not just by presenting it in context, but by making
21、 the context as vivid as possible through the use of visual aids.Situational language teaching is a term not commonly used today, but it had an impact on language courses which survive in some still being used today. Situational teaching tends to be rather inductive because the context is intended t
22、o play an important role in determining the meaning.This method is learner-centered and emphasizes communication and real-life situations. The role of the instructor in ELT is quite different from traditional teaching methods. In the traditional classroom, the teacher is in charge and controls the l
23、earning. In ELT the teacher serves as more of a facilitator, allowing students to be in charge of their own learning. The teacher still sets up exercises and gives direction to the class, but the students do much more speaking than in a traditional classroom. This responsibility to participate can o
24、ften lead to an increased sense of confidence in using the language. Putting the teacher in charge of everything in the traditional classroom has been compared to the Atlas Complex (Lee and Vanpatten, 1995). ELT relieves Atlas of his burden.Language is used for communication. For this reason, ELT ma
25、kes use of communication to teach languages. Whereas traditional language teaching places a lot of emphasis on grammar rules and verb conjugations, CLT emphasizes real-life situations and communication in context (Galloway, 1993). While grammar is still important in the ELT classroom, the emphasis i
26、s on communicating a message. The Characteristics of Junior Middle School Students English LearningNo one can claim to speak a second or foreign language with complete accuracy and mastery. Especially the students in junior middle school whom first to study English. From my research, a part of stude
27、nts pay less attention to the English. These children also think the English is more difficult than other course. In junior middle school, we often hear complain from the teacher, everything of him is ok, but always keep silent in the classroom. We also found that, some students are good at written
28、examination, but poor in spoken English. In the society commerce, some students have a good idea, but cannot talk about it, broken up expressing make him strain. And someone can talk freely and smartly in the casual situation, but in the formal situation.We can found all of the phenomena we mentione
29、d above in any middle school, after an earnest analyzing, we got some reasons about these: 3.1 The Influence of Mother Tongue LanguageA learners mother tongue that we also call ones First Language (L1) always has great impact on his or her Second Language (L2). Up to the 1980s a fairly derogatory te
30、rm interference was used for the L1 influence on L2 performance. The term interference was the origin of the term transfer. However, as Lado (1957) first puts it, such transfer can be negative, but it can also be positive. The positive side is that by borrowing L1 patterns and L1 communication strat
31、egies, the learner can at least stay in communication and manage to make him or her understood. As English teachers in China, they pay more attention to the negative influence of Chinese as the mother tongue.It is very common for second language learners to make errors during the course of SLA (seco
32、nd language acquisition). So learners errors can shed some light on the learners language background and proficiency level, and in this way, the subjects learner errors is meaningful for language researchers and teachers to study and hence stimulate them to improve their research and teaching.In the field of the study of SLA, researchers attempt to uncover the process of learning and explain why learners make errors in the course of learning a second language. Contrastive Analysis (CA), which aimed at predicting errors resulting from L1 interference, failed to a
