Interactive Teaching in English Text Reading in Senior High Schools.doc

毕业论文（设计）Interactive Teaching in English Text Reading in Senior High Schools1. Introduction22. Interactive teaching42.1 Definition of interactive teaching42.2 Two interaction patterns52.2.1 Teacher-student interaction Roles of the interaction teacher.1 As an initiator.2 As a director.3 As a facilitator92.2.2 Student student interaction Student-student interaction through group work Student- student interaction through competition123. Advantages of interactive teaching133.1 Develop students interest143.2 Stimulate students motivation143.3 Help to see what actually exists in the brains of students153.4 Improve students English communicative competence in real-life communication164. Applications of interaction in teaching English text reading in Senior High Schools164.1. Text Reading of English in Senior High Schools164.2 Applying interaction in text reading of English174.2.1 Interaction is used to predict the topic174.2 .2 Interaction is used in detailed explanation in text reading194.2.3 Interaction is used to make a summary215. Some problems that exist in interaction in text reading in Senior High Schools225.1 Lack of affective interaction235.2 Lack of equal interaction245.3 Lack of positive interaction256. Suggestions for effective interaction in text reading in Senior High Schools266.1 Attach importance to the affective interaction266.2 Pay more attention to individual differences of students266.3 Give students more freedom to discover the truth and make an accurate conclusion277. Conclusion28References301. IntroductionNowadays, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learning is pervading in China, but the mastery of English is not an easy job, which not only requires students to have rich vocabulary, but also to make sense of them in different contexts. The most effective way to master English knowledge is to connect it with the text reading. In order to develop the students capabilities of understanding the text reading, teachers should adopt a suitable teaching method for students to learn. However, the traditional teaching method is outdated. In the traditional ways of text reading teaching in senior high schools, owing to the pressures of the rates of admission into higher schools , teachers believe that their responsibility is only to “pass on the truth, impart knowledge and solve puzzles” (Net. 1). Teachers are accustomed to a quiet class atmosphere. They do most of the talks, but seldom interact with the students and much overlook students reactions and responses. Students have got few opportunities to take part in interactive activities so they have to keep silent. They are in a passive role, and they are completely dominated by the teacher, which leads to lack of interaction. This outdated method no longer meets the needs of English teaching.Under the above circumstance, it is urgent and necessary for teachers to find out an effective way to transfer the traditional teaching method into an updated teaching style which reckons students as the main body of learning and emphasizes interactive activities. Now more teachers have regarded the interactive teaching, which is an approach that teachers should train and develop students communicative competence through interaction between teachers and students or students and students，as an effective way to overcome the problems in our language teaching and have come to realize the urgency and importance of training learners to acquire the ability to communicate. Interactive teaching is nothing new. As a teaching method, interactive teaching was initiated during the period of 1930s-1940s in western countries, and it has become a pervading teaching method, while it first started in 1980s in China, and still is not widely adopted. More and more researchers, however, have come to realize the importance of interactive teaching, and the urgency to accept this new concept to meet the need of teaching text reading.Interactive teaching is quite suitable for teaching text reading in senior high schools, because text reading contains many contents, which can show quite a number of learning skills for learners. The thesis is going to give a clear concept of interactive teaching for teachers to adapt this method to teach in text reading in senior high school, which can reach the purpose of developing students communicative competence so as to improve the teaching efficiency. 2. Interactive teaching 2.1 Definition of interactive teaching Interactive teaching is important for both language teachers and students. It is impossible to teach effectively without interaction. In the era of communicative language teaching, interaction is, in fact the heart of communication; it is what communication is all about. We send messages, we receive them; we interpret them in a context; we negotiate meanings, and we collaborate to accomplish certain purposes. Interaction is the collaborative, exchange of the thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other (H. Douglas Brown, 2007:159).Interaction, as a crucial thinking and socializing tool, is the process by which human beings come to know, believe, and act; it is also a complex symbolic process in which meaning is created and negotiated as people in conversations co-construct their social realities (Comeaux, 2002: 89).Interaction functions as “Providing information, expressing feelings, stimulating others, making social contact, controlling others, and related to contact seeking and role playing” ( Keegan,1996:71)True interaction produces a cohesive classroom group where the teacher and students share responsibilities for the defining, carrying out, and evaluating of the learning experience (Gorman, 1969:31)All above have provided us a clear statement what interaction is, which provide us a clear clue to make a definition of interactive teaching. In our opinions, interactive teaching is a kind of approaches that requires teachers to train and cultivate learners communicative competence through interaction between teachers and students or students and students, and interaction is the heart of interactive teaching. In interactive teaching, a large number of activities are designed to give opportunities for students to convey and receive messages through using the foreign language. The teaching tasks become clear through interaction between speakers and listeners. 2.2 Two interaction patternsInteractive Teaching Patterns mean series of teaching English methods organized between teachers and students, or students and students in order to fulfill different learning tasks cooperatively. The interactive teaching demands both the students and teacher to participate in the interactive activities, especially in text reading. There are many kinds of “interaction” but two interaction patterns are the most important. They are teacher-student interaction and student student interaction. Yue Xiaomin (2007) had presented two figures as the following to give a visual description about these two patterns.2.2.1 Teacher-student interactionFigure 1 Teacher- Student InteractionThe teacher-student interaction means the dynamic progress of the interactive exchange, talks, action and influence between teachers and students. So, it is useful to set up positive, suitable, harmonious teacher-student interaction in teaching. Modern teaching theory holds that the teaching process is one in which both teachers and students participate jointly and a complex one in which the information is in constant transmissions and feedbacks. During the process of teacher-student interaction, if teachers want the students to engage in the interactive activities, the teachers are encouraged to improve their appropriated teaching strategies and autonomous, and create the right climate for students to learn, to promote effective learning, and to develop learners individuality. Hence, a teacher should bear in mind what he should do for students learning and what roles he should play. Roles of the interaction teacherAccording to William & Burden (1997:200), teachers who demonstrated more friendship, as well as friendly and understanding behaviors in their interactions with learners were found to foster greater learner achievement and more positive attitudes toward their subjects. It implies that it is of importance to establish a good relationship between teachers and students, for it will not only help teachers to finish off the required teaching tasks high effectively and increase the appeal of English teaching, but also help students to absorb English knowledge and develops the ability to use English correctly. Moreover, in the interactive process, students responses would be completely open ended and therefore unpredictable. Hence throughout the process of interaction, the roles that the teacher plays should be clear in students learning. The following is going to talk about the roles of the interaction teachers in order to articulate the relationship between the teacher and students. In the course of interactive teaching, the teacher is keenly aware of the students and their learning styles, and he should interact with learners as an initiator, director and facilitator to begin the activities, to give a correct direction and provide guidance for students to learn, to communicate well through group work, or competition..1 As an initiatorActually, students often do not want to risk beginning a conversation or topics to interact with others for they are scary of making mistakes or say something wrong. And they do not know what should be said so that they always keep silent. Under such circumstance, teachers should start by posting a question or giving some clues and hints to enlighten students to begin activities, conversation, group discussion or role play. For examples, some simple questions or problems posed by the teacher can lead to initiate meaningful interaction between students and teachers. Therefore, it requires the teacher to be an initiator so that the teacher can get feedback about students comprehension from the interaction. What a teacher does and says to start a task is crucial to the success of teacher-student interaction for it can get students started, prime students and to stimulate them to further communication..2 As a directorOwing to the limitations of lacking knowledge, field of vision and learning resources, students cannot sustain a further interaction so it requests a teacher to be a director to provide adequate useful information, factors, opinions, or ideas for students to give directions. As students engage in either rehearsal or spontaneous language performance, it is the teachers job to keep the process flowing smoothly and efficiently. However, teachers are not almighty so that it asks the teachers to find out some related information. It is better for him to consult some primary sources, such as government documents, original photographs, and genuine objects and artifacts so that it can help students gain entry into topics. With the collective materials, teachers have the capability to give correct directions to sustain the interactive activities with students at the right time..3 As a facilitatorAnother role might be described as facilitating the process of learning, of making learning easier for students, helping them to clear away roadblocks, to find shortcuts, to negotiate rough terrain. The facilitating role requires that the teacher step away from the managerial or directive role and gentle prodding here and there, to find their own pathways to success (H. Douglas Brown, 2001:161). Here the teacher being a facilitator can be regarded as a helper or a guide. On the basis of students existing knowledge, the teacher tries to facilitate students by assisting to solve problems or giving some guidance, suggestions or tips to further study and to explore the differences. As Socrates (Net.2) discovered, a good question can accomplish a result better than just telling the answer. It can be also made a conclusion than it is better to help or guide students to learn or discover the truth than just telling the answer or the result. 2.2.2 Student student interaction Figure 2 Student- Student InteractionThe student- student interaction means the collaborative exchange thoughts, feelings, opinions, suppositions, or ideas between two or more students resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other.Learning how to learn is more important than being“taught” something from the teacher who unilaterally decides what shall be taught. Therefore, students are supposed to study autonomously and not be forced to learn by teachers. The interaction among students is good to achieve this goal.The aim of English learning is to cultivate the learners ability of communicative competence. Student- student interaction is an effective way to realize this aim. It is no doubt that people have lots of common language while they are at the same age or are almost the same age. For students or children, they prefer to share their ideas, opinions or something else with their peers, friends or classmates rather than talk to their teachers or parents. They find that it is easier to communicate with someone having something in common. Through interactions between students and students, they can open their mouths to express ideas freely, show opinions willingly, or have a discussion fiercely. Student-student interaction through group work Group work is the key link of interactive teaching in senior high schools, and it is of importance to cultivate the students abilities to analyze and solve problems. Students were divided into several groups, then the group members work together to discuss the topics given to them or the questions they do not understand. The group work is beneficial for them to exchange ideas and develop their communicative competence.Johnson(1979) describes, students worked as a group to complete a single group product, share ideas and help each other with answers to questions, made sure all members were involved and understood group answers, and asked for help from each other before asking the teacher, and the teacher praised and rewarded the group on the basis of group performance. Through work together in a group, students can interact with each other by convincing evidence to argue or prove what they believes are right, and collect enough materials for group discussion and exchange thoughts, then the members make a general conclusion so as to reach an agreement.First of all, the students are divided into groups, and then the teacher selects an appropriate task. After that, the students act out with cooperation in groups under the teachers assignment. There are some typical tasks to consult as follow.Tasks:1. Games2. Role-play and Stimulate3. Drama4. Projects5. Interview6. Brainstorming7. Information8. Jig saw9. Problem solving10. Opinion-exchange11. Research12. DiscussionThe tasks that reminded in the above require two or more students to accomplish so that it can reach the bilateral or multilateral interactions between students, which help them to familiarize themselves with information easily and to learn quickly. Student- student interaction through competition Competition is a common phenomenon in our life. We compete when we try to do better than others in our study. In a sense, competition is one of the motive forces to study. Students interact with others by attempting to compete for different activities. Regardless success or failure, the students can gain experience and know our strengths and weaknesses. Competition prepares us for the future. A competition is regarded as a good way to facilitate students to join any activity. The teacher can ask a question, and then the students race to be the first to answer the question. If one of the members answers is wrong or imperfect, other students can correct or supplement it. Furthermore, the teachers can give out a topic for students to debate. Students argue with others in accordance with their own opinions by giving out their reasons. What is more, teachers can assign homework which requires the students to communicate each others if they want to get a result.It is advised that schools should not rank and compare students only according to achievement scores. For this kind of competition is not suitable enough to assess students abilities. All kinds of elements should be taken into account. One student may be not good at testing, but good at other aspects. For example, they may do well in organizing activities, doing researches, giving performances and making a suggestion.3. Advantages of interactive teachingIt is no doubt that interaction is beneficial to both teachers and students. Students can learn from others, make a conclusion and enlarge their language store, attain knowledge they do not know before. Just as Wilga Rivers (1987:4-5) said: through interaction, students can increase their language store as they listen to or read authentic linguistic material, or even the output of their fellow students in discussions, skits, joint problem-solving tasks, or dialogue journals. In interaction, students can apply all they possess of the languageall they have learned or casually absorbed in real-life exchanges. Even at an elementary stage, they learn in this way to exploit the elasticity of language. Besides, interactive teaching has many other advantages.3.1 Develop students interest It is said that interest is the best teacher. And a common-sense view is that a persons behavior is governed by certain interests which influence how he actuall