关于英语教学的四个技巧

On the Four Skills of English Teaching Abstract：Classroom teaching is the main way for students to learn English. But in senior high school, a lots of problems still exist in the English teaching especially in the teaching of four skills. The final purpose of teach the four skills is to let students be able to use the language. Generally speaking these four skills cant be separated. For a senior middle school student, reading and writing is more important. Listening and speaking are the major ways while teaching the new lesson. In this paper, the importance and methods of it will be further discussed. Key words：English teaching ；listening ； speaking ； reading ； writing 1 关于英语教学的四个技巧 内容摘要：课堂学习是学生学习英语的主要渠道.但在高中教学中,仍有很多问题存 在,特别是关于英语的听,说,读,写. 对这四个边面教学的最终目的是为了让学生能自如的运用语言.一般说来,这四个方面是 不可分割的,对于一个高中生来说,英语的阅读和写作相对更为重要,而听,说则是老师在 讲授新课时比较重要的方法.本文就这四个方面展开讨论。 关键字：英语教学，听，说，读，写 2 Introduction The purpose of middle school English teaching is to improve the students four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, with the base of necessary phonetics, large vocabulary and good grammar, But this is not the final purpose. The final purpose is to lot let students be able to use the language. Why do we study English? If a man is only good at listening and speaking, can we say that he is good at English? No, If a man is only good at reading and writing, can we say that he is good at the language? No, If a student is good at English, he should be able to use the language, both in speaking and writing. Now most of the students do better in reading and writing English than in listening and speaking. They can read and write, but they can hardly communicate. They can hardly express themselves with their own words. This is partially because of our examination system, and partially of the teaching method . We are not able to change the examination system, but we can improve our teaching method. Most of all the teachers like to provide the students with a lot of knowledge-words, phrases, grammar, usages and so on, They are focusing these thing, especially on the grammar. Yes, the students do need these, but many teachers forget to teach them how to study English, and how to use it. So when you are giving the knowledge to the students, dont forget to teach them all the abilities of the four skills. How to Teach Listening 1.1The Importance of Listening With the development of scientific technology and the increase of communication and trade between countries .English is becoming more and more important as a tool for 3 communication. In many occasions, such as a face to face talk. The teachers often speak of the four skills- listening, speaking, reading and writing. That means each of them is important. You cant say that you have mastered the language without any one of them, Listening, one of the means of language communication, is used most widely in peoples daily lives. About 45%of an adults time concerns listening to other people, listening to the radio, listening to the music. In linguistics ，giving the students a lot of listening activities is a good way of enlarging their vocabulary. On the other hand, it also helps the students improve their listening comprehension. And Listening is the basic ability and the first father in learning procedure. But it is also the most difficult to master the listening ability among the four skills, because listening practice is often ignored in teaching English for we are short of teaching aids and equipments and the English environment which students can understand. Nowadays there are many obstacles to English learning, especially listening English at college .Many traditional methods have many disadvantages .The course tends to the examinations instead of training the students listening ability and so. Another reason is that its more difficult to most listening than reading and other abilities teaching English. Because difficult speakers can pronounce the same sound in different ways. Therefore. its very important to choose the listening practice materials according to the various situational contents in real life. As the learning of languages stares from listening and speaking, our premier task of teaching is to improve students ability in listening and speaking. 1.2 How to Improve the Listening 1.2.1 Think you should try to let the students be in a language environment We know the largest difference between mother language learning and foreign language learning is the environment. A child can soon learn his mother language well. He has heard a lot before he can say something and walk. Then after he is able to walk and say, he has a chance of listening to more. Before he goes to school, he has already been a good listener and speaker. 1.2.2 Enlarge the students knowledge about English The former is easy to understand but the latter is more difficult. Why? It is clearly because the students know little about the latter. Help the students to have the ideas of the TV 4 programs and the things needed in the making of the film and programs. This is the good way to create the ability of imagination. Making up the sentences is to help students to make full use of the words and phrases they have learned. Matching the paragraphs and the sentence dictation helps the students to learn how to divide the longer reading into different minor parts so that it can help them to make the understanding much earlier. 1.2.3 Through the pronunciation We may improve their aural ability by speaking English in the native and idiomatic way. The pronunciation, intonation and sentence structure should not be in Chinese style. 1.2.4 Keeping a relaxed, natural and steady mood When listening to some materials keeping a relaxed, natural and steady mood . Namely, to establish self-confidence and to develop excellent psychological quality are essential in the improvement of aural ability. 1.2.5 Make some simple notes We may make some simple notes while listening, for examples, the names of people and places, time, age, distance, occupation, figures and so on to get a better understanding of the content. 1.2.6 Catching the drift of the content Catching the drift of the content instead of understanding every word and never waste too much time on single words. 1.2.7 Close attention to concession and transition. Pay close attention to concession and transition so as to correctly understand the attitudes of the speakers. The following words are most important: even though, even so, in spite of, unless, although, no matter, however, whatever, no, nor, neithernor, but. 1.2.8 Strengthen imitation and oral English practice. The students sense of hearing and emotion will give students a feeling that they are on the spot. Through watching and listening, the students will imitate actively. Through imitation together with plenty oral practices, the students will improve in listening and speaking. Conduct the teaching in English raises a good atmosphere, catches students interest and 5 improves student listening ability. This practice is very important, and it is a good chance for students to practice the listening. Also it is one of the ways which students can imitate. Using English as teaching medium starts from the simplest daily English and then go in deep bit by bit. Proper body language, hand gesture and explanation in English should be given at the same time. In such an English learning environment students listening and speaking ability will improve obviously. Role acting and English drama performance. Transform the sentences, dialogues, and texts that students learned into short dramas during class frequently. Make the students perform; change front platform into stage; and students become actors; teachers become directors. Students have lots of chances to practice listening and speaking in an easy manner through out the performances. Preparatory measures, replenishing appropriately relevant phonetics knowledge ,listening more , and change and adjust the forms and demands of listening usually , the social and cultural background of western countries , campus audio-visual networks using , the motivation of learning . In a word, in order to improve students ability in listening and speaking English dramatically, we as teachers need to master various and effective teaching methods. How to Teach Speaking 2.1 The Importance of Speaking Speaking cant be taught separately. It is often connected with listening. So we often speak of listening and speaking. When we talk about speaking in class its important to differentiate between the kind of speaking which occurs in mechanical drills and repetition, on the one hand, and situations where student use as much language as they can and where letting their message across is just as important as grammatical accuracy, on the other. In this article it is the latter kind of speaking that we are going to look at. There are three main reasons why it is important to encourage student to speak as fluently as possible. In the first place, speaking activities give them a chance for rehearsal- practicing the real skill of speaking as a preparation for using it outside the classroom. Secondly, when students speak using all and any language they know, it provides valuable feedback about their language knowledge, for both them and their teachers. How well can they perform in spontaneous conversational situations? What do they seem to know? What 6 are they finding difficult to achieve? Lastly, good speaking activities provoke genuine student engagement where they really get involved with the process of language learning in class. The traditional way of listening and speaking is aural-oral method. Now, the new method of two- way communication is very popular. As you know that any teaching method has its psychological base. The aural-oral method began in the 1940s. It is based on behaviours. One of its psychological theory is that learning a language is forming a set of new language habit 2.2 How to Improve the Speaking To speak English well, a number of different elements need to work together: knowing (and choosing) suitable vocabulary, using the right grammar and sentence patterns, and producing the correct sounds, stress patterns, rhythm and intonation. You have to work on these individual elements if you want to see improvements. 2.2.1 Teachers can control the practice wholly or partly The practice can also be controlled by students freely. The internal force of study is not due to the interests in phonetic structure, but the content of the material. 2.2.2 To make the correct response, the students are asked to pay more attention. 2.2.3 Its not just what you say. Non-verbal communication is very important for effective speaking, even for native English speakers. Use gestures, body language and facial expressions for explanation or emphasis, and try to read what the other persons body language is saying. 2.2.4 Sing a song Music is a great way to improve your speaking skills, practice the rhythm of the language and learn some useful expressions. Look up the lyrics (song words) to your favorite songs on the Internet, and then practicing singing aloud. 2.2.5 Take a chance You need the right attitude to improve your English. Look for every opportunity to 7 practice speaking, like talking to people at parties, approaching a foreigner who looks lost, or just putting up your hand when your teacher asks a question. 2.2.6 Think in English every day This is a great way to improve your spoken English, and you can do it anywhere, anytime. At home, you can talk to yourself while doing everyday tasks like preparing a meal. If you are on the train or bus, then describe the people around you (in your head, not aloud!), and when you go to sleep, go over the days events in English. 2.2.7 Find English-speaking friends Told your students that you need to meet people you can speak to in English. This does NOT only mean native-speakers, though. English is spoken by many more people as a second language than as a native language, and being able to understand different accents is very important. How to Teach Reading 3.1 The Importance of Reading As we know , reading is the centre of English teaching . Its also essential to each unit . But how can we get the best effect during the reading course? The key is to apply schema Theory. After reading , we can also use schema model to develop the creative ability of students. 3.2 What kind of reading should students do When the teachers give reading class to students, they should notice a balance-a balance to be struck between real English on the one hand and the students capabilities and interests on the other. There is some authentic written material which beginner students can understand to some degree: menus, timetables, signs and basic instructions, for example, and, where appropriate, teachers can use these. But for longer prose, teachers can offer their students texts, which, while being like English, are nevertheless written or adapted especially for their level. Anyway, the materials to be read should be interesting and meaningful. Teachers should become better acquainted with books written specially for teenagers and 8 dealing with their problems. A popular kind of speaking activity involves an information gap. Students have different information and they have to solve a problem by swapping facts to bridge the information gap between them . Typical examples include situations where four students have each seen separate pictures: by telling each other what they have seen, they are able to work out the story that the pictures tell. In another type, one student has a picture that another student has to draw only by listening to a description . Another kind of activity which provokes the kind of speaking we are considering, involves the students in conducting surveys. These can be on any subject, they can question each other about their daily lives(habits, family,)or preferences(food, films, books).Questionnaires and surveys can fit into a longer teaching sequence so that planning the question near and collating the results afterwards can be valuable language -learning activities in themselves. 3.3 How to improve the reading In the traditional teaching model , the teachers only simply presented the grammars and the language points to students . However , enough attention was not paid to the students reading ability . With the development of psychology and linguistics , Bartlett , a British psychologist put out the schema theory model . In brief , schema refers to that all the knowledge can be made up of one unit . It includes linguistic schemata , Content schemata and rhetorical schemata . Linguistic schemata refer to the language levels that the readers have . Content schemata refer to the contents that the readers are familiar with . Rhetorical schemata refer to the styles that the readers are familiar with . 3.3.1 Permit Students To Read .Encourage students to respond to the content of a reading text Enlarge the background of the reading , enrich the schemata in students mind . Language is closely connected with the culture and society . If the students lack the background of the culture , they couldnt understand the content deeply . In order to enrich the schemata in students mind , We should make full use of teaching aids such as radios , maps , VCD and a projector . I can give an example : Jane Eyre, when we talk about the character about the leading lady, we should learn the society and the culture about that time. we can 9 draw a circle with it and let Ss imagine the words connected with it . Pre-reading means before the text is read. The aims of the pre-reading stage are three- fold: arousing the students interest in the topic or type of text, motivating students to read the text by providing a purpose for reading, preparing the students for the content of the text. Not all three aims are relevant to all text types. So, the teacher does not have to spend too long on motivating them to read. While-reading stage mainly focuses on the exploitation of the text. It aims to help the reader understand the content and structure of the text, as well as the authors purpose in writing it. The purpose of a reading lesson is to teach not test. We can help your students become efficient readers with their own reading strategies and skills. Post-reading work is not directly connected with the text, but usually “grows out” of it. It has two aims: one is to consolidate or reflect on what has been read in the text, the other is to relate the text to the students own knowledge. As teachers, we give students a sense of responsibility to read a text, when they know that they will have to use the information gained from it to do something else. 3.3.2 Encourage students to guess or predict Readers guesses or predictions are based on the cumulative information and syntactic structure they have been learning as they have been reading. Therefore, their guesses are more often than not appropriate to the materials. Students have to realize that risk taking in reading is appropriate; that using context to decide what words mean is a proficient reading strategy and that they have the language sense to make appropriate guesses which can fit both the grammatical and semantic sense of what they are reading. There are many ways to guess the meaning of a new word. First you should find some hints. Context, some phrases, such as “means“, “refer to“, “in other words“, “That is to sag“; are all the hints. Sometimes you cant guess what the word means. If the word doesnt affect your reading, let it be. 3.3.3 Pay attention to your reading habit and your reading skill Some one reads word by word. Some one reads with his finger pointing to the words or with his head shaking. Those are all bad habits. You should read phrase by phrase. Dont blink 10 your eyes so often and dont shake you head. Just move your eyeball. T