如何激发小学生英语学习的兴趣 .doc

【标题】如何激发小学生英语学习的兴趣 【作者】崔琴琴 【关键词】培养；学习兴趣；心理特征；策略 【指导老师】韩 晶 【专业】英语 【正文】. IntroductionIt is well known that the English language has become a universal language and is far more widespread than any other one. It is the language used for international communication trade and commerce which makes it as a very important and indispensable tool in this age of globalization. In recent 20 years, English teaching has entered into a new stage in our country. In 2001, English was officially adopted as a course in the curriculum system of primary school. Consequently, it is necessary to research advanced teaching methods which are adapted to the primary school students in China. The linguists generally accept that children between four to seven years old are the best time to learn English. They are full of curiosity, have sharp hearing, tend to imitate, love saying and moving, eager to emulate. To the primary school students, it is very difficult to learning English. The main task of English teaching for the primary school students is to cultivate their interest in English learning. Interest is a very important factor for the primary school students to learn English. Interest can stimulate students have a strong desire to study and understand English. Interest is also one kind of inner momentum; it can not only help the primary school students to overcome some barriers in English learning, but also drive them to study hard. Students interest in learning is one of the most important psychological components of learning motivation. Students interest in learning English can not only be transformed into learning motivation, but also can improve their development of intelligence. Teachers should adopt some effective strategies in order to cultivate the primary students interest in English learning. Therefore, it is very important to cultivate the primary school students interest in English learning. The Function of Interest in English LearningInterest is the state of wanting to learn or know and it is also the power to hold ones concern or curiosity. Interest, as one of the nonintellectual factors, is defined as people and organizations concerned in some particular activity in Longman Dictionary of contemporary English.1 According to the theory of ego efficiency, it is derived from the feeling of satisfaction to achieve some showings, while in the theory of expectation value: it refers to the fascination of the tasks to be completed to the learner.Everyone tends to pay attention to things which he/she is interested in and explore them actively. For example, if a person is interested in dancing, he would seek opportunities to participate in dancing actively and feels happy, relaxed and fun, and show a positive and voluntary attitude when doing that. The interest, for a persons individuality development, has a huge function to a persons life. Chain-born American Professor Ding Zhaozhong once said:“Any scientific research needs the interest importantly.”2 It may make the human to concentrate on obtaining the knowledge, and complete the current activity creatively, develop their intellect, enrich the knowledge, and open the vision.3Einstein said:“interest is the best teacher.” It is crucial to cultivate students interest. Only when the student is interested in something can his intelligence be brought into play, which makes the student filled with desire to understand and master them.4Confucius, a great educationalist of ancient china, once pointed out:“the man who knows it is not as good as the man who likes it; the man who likes it is not as good as the man who takes delight in it.”5 If your learning reaches the stage that you will know it because you take an interest in it, you have entered the most enjoyable stage of learning. A place where if you are willing to go, you will find a thousand ways, if you are unwilling to go, you will find a thousand excuses. Therefore, the main task of a teacher is in every possible way to lead the students into the most enjoyable stage. They are eager to know it because they are interested in it. There is no exception to English learning. Interest is also a spirit in studying English. As Prawn said just as eating without liking does harm to ones health, learning without liking harms memory and retains nothing. Some experts make experiments show that among the factors of resulting in the students success, interest accounts for about 50%.”6 So the teacher should use all kinds of ways to arouse the students interest in English learning.What this paper mentioned above proves that interest plays an important role in learning language. The Psychological Characteristics of the Primary School Students in English LearningAs we all know, people at different age stages will have different psychological characteristics, which will bring about huge influence to study. However, the primary school students ability of learning is affected by their psychological characteristics more easily than other students. Therefore, it is quite necessary for teachers to know about primary school students psychological characteristics in order to cultivate students interest in English learning.A. Primary School Students Conscious AttentionWe have learned from the pedagogical psychology that pupils conscious attentions can only last twenty minutes, and they are so easily distracted. So if the teaching methods are stiff and boring, they are likely to show some bad habits of speaking and playing stealthily.7 Therefore, in order to avoid having such situation and help students master new knowledge, teachers should use many kinds of teaching methods which the students can accept easily and have concentrate in class, such as playing games, singing songs and so on.We usually say that young children have short attention spans. Cohen argues that if we put children in front of a TV with a favorite cartoon, they will sit riveted for a long period of time.8 This means if the lesson is interesting, the children may maintain their concentration and focus for the whole lesson. If the English teacher can make the lesson interesting, lively and fun, the children may love the English lesson. What can English teachers do to help children love their lessons? English teachers should conduct a lesson which is filled with variety of activities. When children have lost their interest in an activity, they will also lose their concentration, and then have no desire to study. Therefore, it is better to change an activity before children lose interest and get bored. How often should an activity be changed? Schichita suggests that the English teachers should change their activities every 5 minutes. If the same activity lasts 10 or 15 minutes, young children will lose their concentration.9 Therefore, the primary school teachers should often change activities to make the classroom atmosphere more fun and arouse the primary school students interest in English learning.B. Primary School Students UnderstandingJohann Amos Comenius, a great educationalist, once pointed out:“knowledge comes from sense”. The exquisite picture, the fair-sounding music, the interesting picture may stimulate students sense organ, and their interest in learning as well as their inquisitiveness.”10 The situational teaching method, is one of the most effective teaching methods to stimulate the students all kinds of sense organs to simultaneously participate in English learning, and is helpful to train the students ability of independent observing and thinking. The primary school students apperception and understanding develop from unconsciousness and emotionality to consciousness and intention. In the beginning, the primary school students are willing to choose interesting things as their observing object, and then they are gradually capable of apperceiving things according to their learning tasks. Therefore, it is necessary to arouse the primary school students interest in English learning.C. Primary School Students Memory CharacteristicsIn 1885, German philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted one of the first studies on memory. Forgetting turned out to be occurred most rapidly soon after the end of practice, but the rate of forgetting slowed as time went on and fewer items could be recalled. This curve represented the first forgetting curve.11 According to the rule of forgetting curve, the teacher should drill the new knowledge in many kinds of ways and make sure the new knowledge can frequently reappear in class, which can strengthen students understanding to the knowledge which the teacher has taught and then remember it. At the end of class, the teacher should make a conclusion together with students to enhance their memories. As teachers have followed the memory rule, the students get hold of the new knowledge firmly. Meanwhile, the primary school students memories, at first, are unconscious, unconcerned, and automatic. They can commendably memorize interesting things, but they feel that it is hard to memorize the learning task which their teacher has given them. So teachers should make their class very interesting.D. Primary School Students Emotion CharacteristicsThe healthy and positive emotion can make the cognition activity more positive and active. In contrast, the unhealthy and passive mood has interruptive and inhibitory effect to the beginning and running of the cognition activity. Because of the heavy vanity of the primary school students, they all like listening to praise words. Meanwhile, the primary schools students self-estimate mainly depend on their teachers. They are more likely to find their merits, but are unwilling to find their defect. They are likely to evaluate others, but they are not good at evaluating themselves objectively. Therefore, as for the elementary student, the criticism is one kind of hindrance. Such factors prevent them from development. If the child once has been criticized by teacher, he might think that he is not good at this aspect, and is afraid of this discipline, also can not positively participate in the study in classroom. Therefore, teachers should pay more attention to their students emotion and help students to build up confidence to arouse their interest in English learning. The Strategies to Cultivate the Primary School Students InterestIt is well known that many students are not interested in learning English because of the teaching methods. In this situation, the teacher should use picture-assistant instruction and some new teaching methods that provide students with new activities to arouse their interest in learning English.Some poor students complain that they are lack of vocabulary so that they can not follow the teacher in class and they can not complete the tasks. Some good students report that vocabulary instruction tends to be so mechanical that the students are asked to read and re-read, and write and re-write new words. And quite a number of students reported that they are afraid of being criticized and thus withdraw from classroom activities. It is a typically problem happening to students so that when they are practicing listening and speaking, they feel anxious and nervous. However the most important problem is that they are lack of interest in English learning. Therefore, all the problems can be resolved by cultivating the primary school students interest in English learning. On the other side, some teachers methods lack variety and they do not create the language environment properly, they pay attention to imparting knowledge to their students but communication. If they use good methods and more encouragement instead of criticism, students would have more confidence and interest to learn English.A. Using Various Teaching Methods to Arouse Interest1. Using Real Object to Stimulate InterestAccording to the primary school students understanding and apperception and their memory characteristics, at first, teacher should use real object adequately to teach English. Teacher help their students learn real objects name, describe their shape, color, nature, the use and so on. Teachers should enable their student to grasp English language and skill in a relaxed atmosphere. Because these objects are close to students life, the student will be interested in that specially. For example, when teaching the name of the stationery, let the student put out the pencil box firstly, then the teacher put out a pen and say:“a pen”, put out two pens secondly, and say:“two pens”. After repeating it several times, teachers tell the student also take the pen and say as the teacher says. It is easy to help the students to remember those words.These objects are so colorful and vivid that the primary school students can easy concentrate on what they are studying. Therefore, these words are engraved upon their memory.2. Using Performance to Arouse InterestThanks to the primary school students conscious and their memory characteristics, they would like to learn English by performing in class. If teachers can use performance teaching method in class, the primary school students will get great pleasure from it and can easily remember and master what their teacher has taught. Therefore, teacher should use performance to arouse the students interest of learning English.Teacher should guide students to play some games base on the text. S.M. Silvers says:“A break from the monotony of drilling or frivolous activities”. He also claims that many teachers often overlook the fact that only in a relaxed atmosphere can the students study carefully and can they take the language they have learned into practice.12When teaching the dialogue“in fruit shop”, before the class, teachers should prepare apple, orange, bananas, mango. and set out in class. The teachers desks just become the shop counter. Teachers play shopkeepers, and students play buyers.S:“What can I do for you?”B:“I want to buy some apples/banana/oranges.”S:“How many apples do you want?”B:“Three”S:“Thank you.”After performing one time, the teacher uses the other word which the students have studied to repeat this sentential form. The process of performance also is the process of practice. Practicing for a few times, the students already grasped the new sentence unconsciously in a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere. This way also can be used in the dialog of daily communication such as making a call, asking the way, visiting the doctor. In this way, it not only can stimulate the elementary students interest in learning but also help them to improve the ability of using language.3. Using Situational Teaching MethodAccording to the primary school students conscious attention and their understanding and apperception psychological characteristics, the situational teaching method is one of the most effective ways to help the primary school students concentrate in class and improve their positivity in English learning.Students are the main bodies in the teaching activity. The process of teaching and learning is the process of learners actively taking part in the language practice activities. Only do like that, students can acquire something. Using situational teaching method in English teaching should induce learners to use the common laws of language and make learners insist on practicing some language activities in the plentiful situations which are created in teaching, and make learners obtain the knowledge of language and improve their abilities of solving problems. The use of situational teaching method is beneficial to create favorable language learning atmosphere and provide more wide space for study.If situational teaching method is adopted in class, students will receive English knowledge in a more vivid, lively and immediate process and more chances will be created for them to participate in activities and perform program. In this way, students can learn how to use a foreign language in a real situation to communicate with others. Therefore, situational teaching method is feasible.In this respect Halliday remarks“When we acquire our primary language, we do it by learning how to behave in situations, not by learning rules about what to say.”13 So the situational teaching method just follows this rule. The key of situation teaching methods is to create a real life situation. It is very important for teachers to create real life situation in class to cultivate students awareness and competence of communication. A real life situation begins at the moment the teacher enters the classroom. This situation continues until he or she leaves. This situation, natural and lively, is indeed a situation of communication. Teachers should make the best use of it and try to transform it into a student-centered situation where language is acquired more naturally. For instance, when the teacher awards students stickers, they should not hand stickers out. Instead, they should give students a chance to choose their favorites. For example, the teacher says:“There are so many stickers. Which one do you like?” The student A says:“I like the yellow one.” The student B says:“Please give me the green sticker. Thank you.” In this way, students have another chance to practice English. This kind of interactions between the teacher and students turn the English class into a situation of real communication. Long period of such practice will enhance students sense of language, and then cultivate their interest of English learning.4. Using Games to Maintain InterestThe primary school students conscious attention and their emotion characteristics make us understand that their concentration can not last for a long time but they have strong desire to win. On the one hand, according to these psychological characteristics, playing games is the best way to stimulate students to study English. On the