On English Learning Strategy in Rural Middle School 英语本科毕业论文.doc

project title:on english learning strategy in rural middle schoolinvestigator: submitted on may 5th, 2013in fulfillment of the course“practical project design”acknowledgementsduring the time i wrote this thesis. i got help from many people. firstly, i am deeply grateful to my tutor: mr li, who helped me plan the thesis, gave me invaluable advice, and encouraged me at the early stage of the thesis. whats more, he checked my thesis carefully and helped me revise the thesis.i am also grateful to my head teacher mr .wen for editing us such a good course. no amount of thanks will be adequate for my students without whose willing participation in the project implementation it would have remained on paper.without all the support, i could not have completed this tough work.abstractwith the reform of english curriculum, every english teaching staff is facing practical problems that how the english teaching should adapt the development of society. how they should study the new english reform course and improve teaching quality. currently, as the development of quality development which aims at training the students ability on how to learn, more and more teachers realize that the importance of researching the english learning strategy and guiding the students to study. this study presents a detailed report of the project implemented to improve students four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. the final purpose is to let rural students be able to use the language . i do it by making full use of teaching instrument use varieties of ways to stimulate the students interests. such as the development of english school-based curriculum, it is very suitable for lots of rural middle school. key words english teaching strategy /four skills listening speaking reading writing /english school-based curriculummain headings of the project report1introduction2problem analysis3possible solutions4project objective5project hypothesis6project rationale7research design 8project implementation 9data analysis 10conclusion 11references 1 introductionnowadays, english is becoming more and more important after china entered the wto, which can encourage us to study english well. as an english teacher, we know 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 let students be able to use the language. in recent years, english education has a wide range of exchanges in china. however, due to chinas basic national conditions and social status, the overall level of our education also behind the american and other western countries, and the rural english teaching method is due to objective conditions and social factors, and many other reasons also far to the basic level of english education in china, in this case, the creation of a school-based curriculum with local characteristics in order to widen the space of teaching, to seek the best learning and teaching methods is imperative.2 problem analysisit is necessary to investigate why the rural students four skills were poorer and poorer. so interviews were held and questionnaires were issued. it is found that:(1.)a small number of students in rural areas dont want to study english, they think its useless. someone says he neednt go aboard. (2.) most of students are afraid of listening, they concerns listening to other people , listening to the radio, listening to the music and listening comprehension, and even some of them have difficulty in understanding their teacher who gives lessons in english. (3.) those poor students report that, they can hardly communicate. they can hardly express themselves with their own words. (4.)quite a number of students report that they are afraid of writing. they can write the words phrases but they cant write the sentences and article well. as for composition they think it is very difficult.3 possible solutionstaking the above factors into consideration, the following solutions were proposed:1.to stimulate students interest in learning english, clear learning objectives. interest is the best teacher, only students like english, they can learn english well.2. according to local conditions, individualized. according to the actual situation of the students, we should create diverse teaching methods.such as：(1.)trying to let the students be in a language environment, letting the students grasp the phonetic symbol and doing lots of listening tests and practice to help students understand and master the listening skill.(2.) using the aural-oral method and hints to train students oral drills to consolidate students communication.(3.) guessing . there are many ways to guess the meaning of a new word.like: find some hints. context, some phrases, such as means, refer to, in other words, the word-formation to solve students reading trouble.3. broaden the teaching ways to learn english are not confined to textbooks. prepared teaching materials in accordance with the local culture-based .4 project objective this project is aimed to improve students four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing . the final purpose is to lot let students be able to use the language .5 project hypotheses considering the age factors of the students and their own characator, the ways above that i metioned can help students improve their four skills and learn english well and easily.6 project rationale（1）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.but for a foreign language, you can meet it only in formal places, classes, for example, otherwise, you can hardly have a chance to meet it. so i think you should try to let the students be in a language environment.let the students grasp the phonetic symbol. i think the phonetic symbol is the base. the aural-oral method began in the 1940s. it is based on behaviourism. one of its psychological theory is that learning a language is forming a set of new language habit.this is its usual process: stimulus-response-reinforcement.（2）the aural-oral method is fit for the teaching of beginning stage. it focuses on the practice of oral english drills. by hints it can create a fresh environment for speaking english. if the student wants to give the correct response, he has to think it hard, the sentence is not easily forgotten which is ereated by themselves through thinking, sometimes with the teachers hint. they can talk freely. they can express yourself as well as they can.（3）choosing some typical sentences in the text as models and doing sentence making after these models.text shortening and rewriting. it helps to understand the text. it can foster students ability to summarize and to use the language freely.(4) school-based curriculum from the students real life, can contain english poems, popular songs, english movie dialogue, and so on.these can stimulate students interest7 research design for this research , i chose the two classes of my students in grade one as subjects, this project lasted one year. during this research two techniques were adopted, namely questionnaire and test.8 project implementation 1. the preparation stageclassonetwostudents4240teaching materialtextbooks,workbookstextbook school-based curriculumteaching methodstraditional exam-oriented educationdiversified teaching the role of the teachersthe leaderpartnerthe role of the studentsparticipantsthe leader2.the implementation phasethis project mainly recorded on students in class 2 to take four skills training.（1）. listening listening is very difficult for students.so how can we improve the students listening level in a small group? there are seven practical ways1. to proceed step by step according to the students actual statewe should practice listening step by step and according to the students actual state .during the initial stage of listening, we should spend a lot of time training basic skills. as we know, whatever we do, we should begin with the basis. so is the listening. in junior high school, it is the beginning of learning english. so it is the key period. we can study the native language easily especially the ability of listening because we could listen to a lot of materials since we were born. gradually we can speak by ourselves naturally. that is to say, learning a language needs a good environment. but we know that most of us can not go abroad and we can just learn english at home and in classroom. thus we almost have no real situation and should spend a lot of time .this process is long and the work is very difficult. in china we usually use class teaching. when we train the students basic skills, we have the following methods. first we should teach the letters and the phonetic symbols one by one. during this period, we should be very patient. when the students have some wrong pronunciation, we need to teach them the way to correct it. if this process could not be done well, the students will not grasp correct pronunciation and it is very difficult for them to improve listening and speaking. to finish that, we should be qualified. as long as we do this work very well, we will reduce many tasks and save a lot of time. besides, students are also required to master some basic vocabulary for every-day use. words are the most basic element. in every lesson, we should teach the new words firstly. then ask the students to read them to gain good impression. the best way is to ask them to read the text because there is a context, which is easy for them to memorize the words and know some structures .of course we can use tape- recorder. let the students listen to the tape and then read after it, which can improve their pronunciation and listening gradually and help them form a good feeling. what i have said is the basic phonetic knowledge and new words. there are many other things; for example, the students should try their best to memorize a lot of relevant knowledge about the habits and cultures of foreign countries. and we can easily know that that this task can not be finished in a short time so we should give some instructions to them. we can tell the students to read some relevant books. after period of such training, we can let them listen to longer sentences and short conversations and some other materials which are the appropriate level of linguistic difficulty as regards syntax and vocabulary. if we can do it in this way, students will not have the feeling that listening comprehension is high up and beyond grasp at the very beginning. a good beginning is half done. good basic skills will certainly make their future study easier. 2.to provide interesting materialsin class we should practice listening to some materials away from the usual kind of memorization exercises often used in classrooms and in language labs. the listening practice should be that in which students are to listen with full attention to something that interests and challenges them; they are to get the information or get at the meaning of what they hear and then produce a response to what theyve understood. to do this, we can select materials of appropriate interesting level. we neednt go over all the items in “listening practice” one by one without considering whether it is easy or difficult, interesting or boring. as we know, when one is not interested in something, he or she cant do it well anyway, even when forced to. so is the case with listening comprehension. dull materials can only make students lose interest at all. as it proves, students perform better with materials that they want to listen to because they enjoy them. in order to make the effect of listening comprehension more notable, sometimes we need add something, such as songs, humorous stories, some important news at home or abroad, personal anecdotes, materials containing some puzzles to be solved,etc.3. to give some relevant instructions before listeningif we are going to ask our students to listen to something, we cant just stand or sit there playing the tape-recorder or we cant just explain some words or expressions. we should try to guide our students with our prior knowledge of the material. for instance, we can introduce the topic with short discussion; let them make a guess of what is going to be heard according to the title or give them some hints to help themto understand what they are going to listen to. by doing so, we can arouse their expectations and make them mentally prepare for the listening material. what is more important is to help students to be selective by giving them a purpose for listening. without a definite purpose, they will be in the dark. when they try to memorize everything, they prove to forget almost everything in the end. so try to give students a few questions before first hearing, or ask them to prepare to pick out 2 or 3 main points, or the main steps in a process. set tasks which entail concentrating on certain features and throw away irrelevant information. sometimes if the material is too long, we can split it up into short sections and ask questions appropriate to each short section as we go along. sometimes if the material is a little difficult, we can introduce it in simple language first. but, remember, dont say too much or just retell the whole material by yourself. otherwise, students will have no interest to listen to it or they will not listen to it with great care since they think theyve already known a lot about it. we can also help students to develop the ability of taking notes while listening. when we do this, we first give some questions about what the students will listen to. thus, they will be effective with the aim. in this way, students will not miss the important facts and details. besides, it is also conductive to the comprehension of a long material.4. to do some dictation exercisesanother effective way of improving students listening comprehension which can be used in class is to do some dictation exercises, which is particular to those students who have been introduced to the language only through reading and writing rather than listening, they often have great difficulty in recognizing the spoken forms. thus, by doing dictation exercises, they can gain a lot. for example, if there are some homonyms, the students should pay more attention to those. they should think those words through the context. during this course, they will form better thought. at the same time, they can strengthen the ability of spelling and writing. similarly, when the teacher finds it worthy of doing, they will be likely to use this method frequently. undoubtedly, we can pay more attention to the dictation and regard it as a technique for teaching listening comprehension. if we can do the work frequently, it will be of great help to students. of course, the material for dictation shouldnt be too long or too difficult, otherwise they will feel that it is really beyond their understanding or interest and will dislike it and even abandon it. so be sure to select the proper material and make sure that the exercise will certainly contribute to the improvement of their listening comprehension.5. to catch the main pointsusually, most students like to understand each word in any passage. in fact, it is impossible for them to listen to different passages at different speed. generally speaking, the students just know the main idea which can help them to understand what they have just heard. usually in every passage there are some new words which do not influence their understanding. so they neednt understand each word at any time unless they have not correct pronunciation. so we should help students to overcome this problem and help them know how to catch the main points in listening6. to create a good language environmenta good environment is very important for learning language. in the class, we should try our best to use simple english to train the students listening. at first, the students usually have some difficulty in listening. to solve this problem, in my opinion, we can first use chinese and body language to help them. for example, in grade 1, junior high school, when we say the phrase” shut the door” at the first time, the students usually do not understand that, at this time, we can perform it. then we say it again, they will understand that phrase quickly. similarly, we can use chinese. if we usually do this, the students can gradually be accustomed to this environment. but what i want to mention is that we must pronounce correctly and standard. besides, how much english should we use? we should perform it according to the students actual level. generally, at the beginning, we can use english and chinese equally. as time goes, we can gradually reduce using chinese. after a long time, the students can form a good instinctive feel for the language.7. to enlarge the students knowledgewithout a certain materials, it is very difficult to improve the listening ability in a shorter period. so when the students face this kind of material which they are not familiar with at all, they usually think it is too difficult. to learn a foreign language,