The Roles of Multi-media in English Teaching in Junior Middle School.doc

the roles of multi-media in english teaching in junior middle school1. introduction as everyone knows, the english teaching in junior middle school has reformed. the principles of the movement are: the primacy of listening and the absolute priority of an oral method in the classroom. it requires the english lessons have more texts, graphics, images, animations and sounds to create a certain situation for students to practice english. but we also know that it is hard to reach this requirement with traditional teaching methods. teaching english with multi-media is a good way to solve this problem. therefore, the research of english teaching methodology with multi-media becomes a new task facing english teachers. how to use multi-media as an assistant for english teaching is the core of the task.2. the relationship between multi-media and english teaching it goes without saying that the best way to be immersed in english is to go to an english-speaking country and live there. it is true that this would speed the progress considerably. unfortunately, this option is not open to most chinese learners of english. most of chinese learners especially, the junior middle students can learn english well by english teaching. the english teacher teaches english with multi-media can create an environment that near-immersion without actually leaving the country. the multi-media can provide an ideal learning environment for english learning: offering rich authentic language materials, providing multiple representations, facilitating collaboration among students and real-life communication, etc. downloading english learning materials from internet is a good way. after that, the english learner can hear english 24 hours a day by listening to the materials from short-wave radio or fm stations that broadcast music and information shows in english. the news in english of cctv broadcasts nightly. its the dominant language of the world wide web. english is everywhere. if you merely keep your ears and eyes open, you can receive a great deal of passive reinforcement of english grammar, vocabulary and spelling with using the multi-media. as far as active speaking skill is concerned, it is quite possible to create your own english-speaking environment. there are english corners, email contacts, chartrooms, and clubs on internet. so multi-media are important assistants for english teaching.2.1 developmental prospectteaching english with multi-media in junior middle school has a good developmental prospect. it is also a tendency of the development of teaching. nowadays, the english teaching in junior middle school has reformed. it emphasizes that the listening and the speaking are the first and important things. in a word, it emphasizes the communicational abilities of students. and with the development of the information and technique in our society, multi-media have a lot of advantages in english teaching. the multi-media have changed traditional teaching methods and study methods. it has some special functions such as regulating the english study atmosphere, creating the study environment and stimulating the study interest. multi-media teaching not only enlarge teaching capacity and the teaching contents in class, but also enlarge the students knowledge and the visual field of the students. in the meantime, the junior middle school english teaching also provides a vast stage for the multi-media. the techniques of the multi-media can develop well when it helps the english teacher to teach english as an assistant. with the english academics integration and information technique promoting, multi-media can help the student to develop the ability of researching the knowledge, obtaining knowledge and self-thinking. it can create a lot of certain situations for english teaching with showing text, sound and picture at the same time. in the future, the multi-media will be the main teaching equipments for english classroom. it will bring great effects to english teaching.2.2 the current problemnowadays, more and more english teachers have realized that they should be familiar with multi-media and make it serve for english teaching. but whats a pity; but there still exists many problems in the multi-media english teaching currently. for example, some schools have no money to set up the multi-media equipments. some schools have no conditions for english teachers to taint their drills of using multi-media in lessons. some english teachers believe that it spends their too much time to prepare the lesson with multi-media. besides, some english teachers do not understand the requirements of english teachings reform. when using the multi-media, some english teachers dependent on multi-media completely and neglect the teachers function. a lot of teachers just concentrate on showing the details by playing the multi-media and they use the multi-media to replace the teachers introduction and illumination. so how to make multi-media as an assistant for english teaching is the most important current problem.2.3 proper position: assistant effectin the traditional class, the teacher is in charge and controls the learning. nowadays, although the teacher still sets up exercises and gives introduction to the class, but the teacher serves more as a facilitator with allowing students to charge of their own learning. what is more, in modern english teaching in junior middle school, it emphasizes communicative language teaching (clt) and situational teaching. these methods are learner-centered and emphasize communication and real-life situations. according to these changes in english teaching, the multi-media must be an assistant to help the english teachers to bring rich authentic language materials, provide multiple representations, facilitate collaboration among students and real-life communication, etc. in order to make the multi-media work effectively, the english teacher must understand that the multi-media just can be use as an effect assistant in english lesson. as a modern teaching means, the multi-media have a lot of advantages in english the teaching in junior middle school, but the traditional teaching means also has advantages. the english teacher cant abandon precious experience that the people of the past leave and just think highly of the multi-media. in a word, the multi-media are just an effective assistant for english teaching.3. the roles of multi-media in english teaching in junior middle school.multi-media are important assistants in english teaching in junior middle school because they have lot of functions in english teaching.4. the function of multi-media there are many functions of multi-media in english teaching, including creating atmosphere, communication, performing, expanding the resource and so on2. the following opinions are the most obvious functions.4.1 creating atmospherein english lesson, multi-media can create a good atmosphere because multi-media can produce text, picture and sound at the same time. for example, at the beginning of the english lesson, some english teachers like to play a short and meaningful song to arouse the students interest. some english teachers like to have a short duty report. in this procedure, if the english teacher just teaches in the traditional way, it will be very boring. but if the teacher shows some related pictures or words on the screen to stimulate the students interests, the students will do the duty report more actively, aggressively and successfully. the complement of this task makes a certain situation for the teacher to create a good atmosphere to study with the students. it is benefit to encourage the students to finish the procedure of teaching task well. besides, the students in junior school are just some teenagers, so it is hard to ask them to follow the teachers steps in the whole lesson. in this case, the english teacher must use some methods to arouse the students attentions in time. in traditional, the teacher expressed his opinions just in words or body languages after the students giving the answers. it was not good enough to arouse the students attention in a long time. but the multi-media can do it well. for instance, when the students share the correct answer with their classmates, the teacher can show a “win” or “great” gesture with a loud applause on the screen. maybe, some of teachers can show a bunch of flower on screen to express their agreements. if the students give a wrong answer, the teacher can give a crack voice with a breaking glass cup. it is also well to show this attitude with a cartoon person with tears and saying “whats a pity!” it is a good way to create an easy and happy learning atmosphere by using these different and funny ways to show the teachers different attitudes.4.2. performing functionin traditional teaching methods, an english lesson almost runs in a prearranged way. the english teacher speaks to the students to impart the knowledge, including the meaning of words, the usage of words, sentences and grammars, the things that describe in the text and so on. at the meantime, the students write down the knowledge that they need or they listen carefully to imagine the thing that the teacher describe. it is very hard to make the lesson vivid and interest. it is also difficult for the students to master the knowledge. now, with the help of the multi-media, the english teacher can show the students some vivid performances that related to the texts. for example, unit 6 in grate 2 is a unit about the directions asking and answering. in this unit, there are many conversation of finding the right places. maybe it is easy to make the students to understand the nouns of directions. but is must be hart for the students to make some dialogues with the requirements of the english teacher. now, the multi-media play great parts in this procedure. the english teacher can show the videos of the text to the students by multi-media two or three times. and at the same time, the students can follow the video to read the conversations. because the videos are so vivid and real that the students can master the words and sentences easily. and then the students can imitate the videos to make some similar conversations with looking the map on the screen. multi-media can make the abstract things show in a material way. for example, the teacher wants to tell the student that there are many kinds of material of clothes. if the teacher just teach in this way:” there are many kinds of material of clothes. they are cotton, leather, silk, wool, flax, acrylic fibers.” maybe, the students can remember these words by read them time and time. but they will not understand what the cotton is and what the character of the cotton has. but if the teacher uses the multi-media to show some pictures of them and mark each of the pictures with these words, the students will understand the characters of them quickly and easily. so, the multi-media are very important to perform the related contents of the english lesson.4.3 communicationthere are many ways to teach language. one is called communicative language teaching (clt). this method is learner-centered and emphasizes communication and real-life situations.the role of the instructor in clt is quite different from traditional teaching methods. in the traditional classroom, the teacher is in charge and controls the learning. in clt 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 often 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). clt relieves atlas of his burden.language is used for communication. for this reason, clt makes 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 clt classroom, the emphasis is on communicating a message.in clt, students practice real-life situations, for example, buying food at the market or asking someone for directions. in these exercises, the goal is for the student to communicate his or her needs and thoughts, without worrying about having perfect grammar.using the multi-media is an ideal way to teach language using clt as the theory. it allows for realistic simulations of communicative situations. there is a useful ways of using multi-media to teach english. it is ccall3( communicative computer assisted language learning). ccall will create an environment in which using the target language feels natural, both on screen and off. an important source of comprehensive input that is often overlooked in the discussion of computer materials is the communication that usually takes place, not between computer and user, but between users. many such programs are games, such as a la reencounter de philippe or who is oscar lake?” they place the learner in a situation in which understanding basic communication, and social and cultural contexts are vital to advancing in the game. the class often becomes a real community, not just when using cll but all of the time. students become much more aware of their peers, their strengths and weaknesses and want to work as a team.4.4 optimizing the progress of class teachinghow the english teacher can optimize the progress of the class teaching? at first, the english teacher must understand the constructivism theory of learning4. it is one of the basic theories of optimizing the progress of class teaching. j. brunners constructivism theory of learning: learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/ past knowledge. the learner selects and transforms information, constructs hypotheses, and make decisions relying on a cognitive structure to do so. this theory requires the learning in english lesson must be related to what the students already know and the teaching methods must be related to the learners strategy. for example, this theory puts forward three principles of instruction:(1) instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing and able to learn (readiness).(2) instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the students (spiral organization).(3) instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and /or fill in the gaps (going beyond the information given). the multi-media can insert and play the texts, the pictures and sounds in a courseware, so it is very easy to follow the above principles to have an instruction. so the multi-media can optimize the progress of the class teaching.4.5 expanding the teaching resourcein junior middle school, it is 45 minutes a lesson. it is very short so it is very precious and should be cherished by teachers and students. how to make full use of is very important. the most important problem is that the teacher must to solve is how to teach the students more knowledge in such a short time. those are the same to english teaching. using the multi-media is a useful way to expand the teaching resource in lesson, because the multi-media can play the text, sound, graphics, images, animation at the same time. in traditional way, the basic teaching aids just are blackboard and chalks, maybe here also a tape record in english lesson. in this condition, the english teacher must organize his oral and his writing on blackboard in lesson. it must cost a lot of time to finfish these procedures, so it is hard to teach more things in lesson. but if the english teacher uses the multi-media, he can make a multimedia cai or powerpoint courseware beforehand which saves a lot of time in lesson. besides that, the english teacher will insert some useful contents such as texts, sound, graphics, images, animation into the courseware as the time permit. therefore, the english teacher has more time to pass more contents here is another method to expand the teaching resource by using cai courseware. that is used in homework. at the end of the lesson, the english teacher can ask the students to find more related information about text on the internet and give a certain task to the students. for example, after a lesson about spring, the english teacher can ask the students to find some pictures that can describe spring. and then, ask the students to describe the pictures in one or two sentences. or maybe, the english teacher can encourage the students to read some english cartoon books and films, to listen some english songs in spare time. so the resource in english teaching is expanded with using the multi-media.4.6. creating the condition of independent study junior middle school students views issues as either right or wrong, demonstrates a strong sense of justice and will work conscientiously for an important cause, is fascinated with the extremes of what exits and what is known, is able to memorize and retain massive amounts of detail. according to this character of the students, the english teacher should help the students to develop their abilities of independent study. the multi-media can help the english teacher to create the condition of independent study well. the multi-media support many activities that can develop the students independent study5. for example, in a writing lesson, the english teacher can show related pictures or texts on the screen, and then divide the whole class into 4 groups to have a project-work. the project-work is an extended piece of work where learners co-operate to