The Independent Study on Student-Activity-Centered English Language Teaching.doc

以学生活动为中心的英语教学独立研究the independent study on student-activity-centered english language teachingcontentsabstract1chapter1: what is student-center? 21.1: the situation of the education faced: 21.2: the definition of student-center: 21.3: what does this involve? 3chapter2: the importance of student-center32.1：the traditional way of language teaching32.2:the new teaching method-student-centered42.3:how to change the traditional teaching mode into the student-centered mode? 4 chapter3: the role of the teacher and student in new teaching mode53.1 role of the teacher53.2 the role of student6chapter4: how to get the student-centered mode? 74.1: regard student activity as the center74.2: the necessity of regarding student as the center74.3: use edition in new century teaching material. 84.4: game-playing9chapter5: the meaning of student-activity-centered english language teaching12conclusion: 13reference: 14the independent study on student-activity-centered english language teaching摘 要：教学是培养学生的主要方式，它的目的在于提高学生的素质，让学生得以全方面发展。所以教师必须把学生放在教学的中心地位。教师中心论和学生中心论反映的是两种截然不同的教学观点，在实践教学中则表现为不同的教学方法。如果在新的教育体制下要求以学生为中心，这就要求教育者从传统的教师中心转变到学生中心，充分考虑学生的兴趣，爱好以及需求等。近一步说就是要教师把以学生活动为中心的理念带到课堂中来，而自己则作为一种辅助手段。以学生为中心是社会和科技发展的重要产物，并且对社会发展起着不可估量的作用。传统的教学模式是以教师为中心，老师一味的教，学生则一味的学。老师甚至控制学生的思维方式，在传统的教学模式中学生只是扮演了一个吸收机的角色。但近年来一种以学生为中心的教学方法出现了。它把学生放在中心地位以便让他们自主的学习,使课堂活动更加丰富多彩。关键字：学生中心；提高学生的素质；转变；学生活动abstract: teaching is a main way to train students. the purpose of teaching is to improve students quality. make students get full development，so teacher must take students as the center in teaching, mainly in studying. whether to regard teacher as the center or regard student as the center, has reflected two kinds of different education ideas, shown two kinds of completely different teaching ways in the course of real education. if the education regards student as a center, it will require the educator to change their view from teacher-center to student-center, fully consider students interests, hobby need and so on. furthermore the educator should take students activity as the center in the course of teaching, the teacher only acts as a person who helps. and learners center of today is under the new social development and technological conditions and treating education as an important part of the whole society. the teaching method to regard teacher as the center, teachers teach students everything, the teacher tells students what should be learnt, how to study and why to do this. the teacher also controls students thinking and the students follow the teachers ways sedulously and absorb all the things that the teacher teaches in the class. this is a kind of teaching that takes teacher as the center but regarding students as a machine that need only absorbing. recent years there is a new teaching mode that appears. it is on regarding students as the center so that the students can study more independently. the classroom communication activity that sets up is rich and colorful. key words: student-center; improve the students quality; change; students activity chapter1: what is student-center?1.1: the situation of the education faced: a common situation facing the teacher of english as a second language (esl) in foreign countries, and especially in developing countries, is the lack of adequate materials and resources. the procurement of simple media such as newspapers, brochures, advertisements, and recordings of native speech may entail inordinate effort and expense. however, my experiencesin teaching english and developing materials and activities from locally available resources have resulted in the recognition that the teachers most dependable, accessible, and valuable resource is the students themselves.to be most successful, activities should, therefore, endeavor to exploit that resource as fully as possible. discovery trail, a game originally developed for teaching esl to adults in south korea, is an attempt to use the students as the central element of the learning process. in this section, the development of the idea of discovery trail will be described and since every classroom practice derives from an underlying theory of some kind, the premises and assumptions upon which the game is based will be examined.1.2: the definition of student-center: as we all know, the teaching of english is more than just teaching a subject or a collection of facts and rules to be memorized. english is a living system of communication spoken throughout the world. by learning english the students are opening up new avenues of discovery.the teaching of english, must allow the students to learn the methodology of the language and allow the students to use it for themselves. in order to achieve the goal, we focus on the textbook and blackboard, and place the student as the main center of activity, the main drive and measure of progress. this is, of course, not to say that the textbooks etc. will not be used, just that they will be placed in a different role for this style of teaching of english. by placing the student at the center, we mean that we focus our energy on him/her, and concentrate on what he/she is learning and how the language is being used. it is a shift in paradigm, and as such, the tools used must be appropriate. it is decentralizing the task of teaching to the whole class, the students, and away from the teacher. of course, no matter what we name it, many of us have been using this approach for quite a while, and this seminar is merely intended as a focusing exercise to ensure that we are still focused on the student as the main center of the teaching. 1.3: what does this involve? we are all familiar with some of the tools of student-centered teaching(sct), such as games, and skits for example, but what we will try to do here, is to look at why these activities are student centered, and what benefit they give to this method of teaching (to ensure that the game is also a learning exercise). this will help us keep the focus on the student, and learn new ways to redirect our energy and resources to further support this system. the reasoning behind the structure of our talk supports that for the students in each of the grades, the goals are slightly different, and we shall address each in turn. another factor is the student level; textbook teaching can tend to be an express train experience, and as we know, some students can be lost or bemused along the way, the rest unable to stop or even slow, due to timetable constrictions. this is also an issue with sct, and so may need to be debated as a separate issue.chapter2: the importance of student-center2.1：the traditional way of language teachingmany a time the teaching of english language falls short of fulfilling its goals. even after years of english teaching, the learners do not gain the confidence of using the language in and outside the class. their output in the language is limited to writing run-of-the-mill answers for literature chapters and producing grammatically accurate, but, isolated sentences. real communication involves ideas, emotions, feelings, appropriateness and adaptability. the conventional english class hardly gives the learners an opportunity to use language in this manner and develop fluency in it. thus, the main purpose of the language teaching course, i.e., developing skills in communication, is unfortunately, neglected.until recently, affective factors have not been viewed as essential part of the learning process and have generally been neglected by traditional teaching methodologies.the grammar-translation method, through such techniques as translation, recognition of cognates, and the deductive application of rules, stresses cognitive input. the audio-lingual method, employing repetition, substitution, and transformation drills as well as dialog memorization, treats language learning as a habit formation process. affective considerations have traditionally depended on the teachers temperament. that is to say, such considerations have been incidental rather than integral to the teaching methodology and were not grounded in a conscious philosophy of pedagogy. with the growing realization of the importance of affective factors came a number of new approaches to language teaching directed at the “whole person” which focused on the condition of the learner.such holistic approaches attempt to enhance the students readiness to learn and recognize the comfort, enjoyment, and engagement of the students as legitimate and primary concerns of the language teacher.2.2: the new teaching method-student-centeredcompared with the past course standard, regarding student as the center is the new teaching method and the need of the society. teacher must pay attention to students development in all aspects, let students have more autonomies to choose the way of study and even study the content. the new lesson has marked and put forward subject teaching and credit management to make two concepts: subject teaching divides the knowledge of every discipline into several subjects, besides required course, students can also take different subject according to ones own interest and reality, it has just changed the examination way to a certain extent, require students based on the premise that finish repairing study of three years.2.3: how to change the traditional teaching method into the student-centered mode?additionally, the traditional teaching method of teacher assole information-giver to passive students appears outdated. in berkeley (angelo, 1991) study on undergraduates in a large lecture hall setting, it was found that only 20 % of the students retained what the instructor discussed after the class. they were too busy taking notes to internalize the information. also, after a lecture has passed eight minutes, only 15 % of the students are paying attention. furthermore, project 2061 (1990, p. xvii ) charges that the present curricula in science and mathematics are overstuffed and undernourished. they emphasize the learning of answers more than the exploration of questions, memory at the expense of critical thought, bits and pieces of information instead of understanding in context, recitation over argument, reading instead of doing. they fail to encourage students to work together, to share ideas and information freely with each other, or to use modern instruments to extend their intellectual capabilities.one proposed solution for this problem is to prepare students to become good adaptive learners. that is, students should be able to apply what they learn in school to the various and unpredictable situations that they might encounter over the course of their work. obviously, the traditional teacher-centered, textbook guided classroom has failed to bring about the desired outcome of producing thinking students. a much-heralded alternative is to change the focus of the classroom from teacher dominated to student-centered using a constructivist approach.constructivism is not a new concept. it has its roots in philosophy and has been applied to sociology and anthropology, as well as cognitive psychology and education. perhaps the first constructivist philosopher, giambatista vico commented in a treatise in 1710 that one only knows something if one can explain it (yager, 1991). immanual kant further elaborated this idea by asserting that human beings are not passive recipients of information. learners actively take knowledge, connect it to previously assimilated knowledge and make it theirs by constructingtheir own interpretation (cheek, 1992).chapter3: the role of the teacher and student in new teaching mode3.1 role of the teacherprobably the most difficult aspect of student-centered learning is finding a comfortable balance between maintaining authority and relinquishing control. while at times we are tempted as teachers to determine the directions class discussions may take or to take advantage of a captive audience, there are ways to resist this temptation.a.) dont be afraid of silence. although a silent classroom may be uncomfortable, bearing with it suggests to students that the responsibility of continuing discussion is not solely yoursthey will gradually learn to break the silence themselves, and appreciate the opportunity. : sit among the students. removing yourself from the focal point of the classroom encourages students to see you as a participant rather than a leader. this suggestion means that you will wear two hats in the classroom. at times you will need to take control of the classroom, but students usually learn to recognize the shift in roles. ways to remind the students though, range from simply standing at the front of the classroom to silence reading depending on the personality of the class.b) pay close attention to what students are saying in discussion and challenge them to say more. work with the students ways of understanding a subject. form your questions based on where the class is taking the discussion. at times, this means you will play devils advocate, the interested questioner who wants to know more, or the voice who reminds students that the fundamental questions have not yet been answered. it is not necessary to lead the discussion, but to listen so you can emphasize and acknowledge productive thinking as well as help students complicate their ideas. learn to trust the students sense of purpose. trust them to discover challenging and meaningful questions and lines of thought to explore.c) find ways to help students see themselves as authorities in the classroom d.) assigning group work is a good way for students to realize they can trust each other for valuable input.e.) assigning discussion leaders the class period before you plan a discussion can better insure that the students will discuss what is important to themf.) moving away from requiring students to raise their hands before they contribute to discussion usually leads to spontaneous and lively interaction. (if you are fortunate enough to have a particularly lively class, you may have to return to hand rising in order to insure that quieter students have a voice.)g.) encourage students to talk to each other, not just to youh.) have students sit in a circle or turn chairs away from front of class.3.2 the role of studentthe students nowadays must be cultivated into lifelong learners to adjust themselves to the times of knowledge explosion. therefore, autonomous learning is becoming more and more important in learning. the students at present have been used to the teacher-centered teaching model, and may not make them accept the student-centered teaching model totally without any trouble because sometimes they are so at loss that they dont know what to learn. there is no doubt that it is very useful for the students to learn autonomously. but it is not very suitable in our students cases. as we know, our students at college have got used to being taught by teachers in class before they registered into college after many years learning in school. even the worse, guided by the exam-oriented teaching model, most of the students nowadays can do nothing but answering the fixed questions and passing the exams.shift the students complete feeling to the new lesson and pay attention to probing into study, encourage students to think independently, encourage students to do it by ones own. make sure that the atmosphere in the classroom is active; the students put forward the question actively, though some questions are to have absolutely answered, but the purpose is to make the students participate in the activities. in order to make progress in language learning, a student should not only absorb information, but be able to transform that information into a usable form.likewise, the functional capabilities of a student can be enlarged into cognitive, generative rules which will enable him to expand his repertory of utterances.that is, discrete items of performance can coalesce into patterns which, by process of analogy, may be used to formulate and produce new items. the progress from cognitive to psycho-motor is, then, essentially a deductive process while the reverse route is inductive.both processes play important roles in learning. affective factors influence not only the degree and speed of progress in the cognitive and psycho-motor domains, but the strength of the circuit (represented by broken lines in the diagram) that links the two together.thus, it is clear that no part of this triad can be neglected if effective language learning is to take place.chapter4: how to get the student-centered mode?4.1: regard student activity as the centerregarding student activity as the center means a teacher on the basis of studying the teaching material and students actual conditions, with organizing the student activity effectively after class in the lesson, pass the student activity, let student oneself solve the problems and achieve the goal of teaching, accomplish the task of teaching.regarding student activity as the center and advocates students participating in voluntarily, probe into finding and exchange and cooperation between students, it has changed the excessive reliance on the teaching material, memorize mechanically is drilled. in the activity, students have more autonomy. they select suitable materials independently, try to find out the learning method and accumulate the experience of studyi