Integrating-Multimedia-into-English-Teaching.doc

A Brief Look at the Importance of Integrating Multimedia into English Teaching in Rural Middle SchoolsThe introduction of multimedia-assisted instruction as a modern teaching mode breathes new hope into middle school English teaching. It is a kind of innovation to facilitate middle school English teaching by means of vivid and flexible teaching modes. And flexibly applying multimedia in mid-school English classes can work wonders in attaining surprisingly effective teaching. This article elaborates on the significance, principles, designs, application and attention-worthy problems of multimedia instruction.Innovation in teaching modes is the core of task-based mid-school English teaching reforms. And the introduction of modern techs provides multiple platforms for mid-school English instruction. Employing multimedia to conduct teaching activities can stimulate students interest in English learning and uplift their actual ability to use the English language. Multimedia teaching holds considerable significance for mid-school English teaching. The countryside in our country is vast, densely-populated and socioeconomically backward. Teachers do not have many teaching mediums at their disposal. With the development in computer information technologies, multimedia teaching is gradually stepping into campuses and classrooms. Its striking teaching characteristics, rich teaching contents and enlivening teaching situations combine to accelerate the informationization of educational techniques and establish in a step-by-step manner a new teaching mode to replace the conventional one that mainly features teachers indoctrination in a setting of one blackboard, one chalk and one mouth which is listened to by all. In the classroom teaching of Grade Seven English, teachers should reasonably use computer multimedia teaching systems to set up English learning situations, solve teaching-related issues concerning audiovisual English teaching, etc and let students sense audiovisually English language materials to develop their audiovisual capabilities. Meanwhile, the teachers guiding role should be given full play to help students exercise their spontaneousness and creativity so that they can be led to conduct a large quantity of quality drills in listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this way, students can not only absorb fundamental English knowledge in a finite class but also hone their basic linguistic skills, in other words, their ability to think and speak in English gets cultivated and the solid foundation gets laid for them to communicate in English. But we must do research and keep practicing in the making, applying, evaluating, etc of PPT lesson plans to grasp key teaching points, solve difficult teaching points and improve the effectiveness of classroom teaching. Many schools are now equipped with multimedia and most teachers are engaging themselves in multimedia teaching, which has revolutionized classroom teaching forms, mediums and means. Here, I have summarized my personal experience of conducting multimedia teaching and will analyze how to effectively utilize multimedia resources in Grade Seven English classrooms.The significance of multimedia teachinga. Help to stimulate students interest in learning.Applying multimedia in teaching helps to stimulate students interest in learning, complies with the happy-to-learn principle and embodies the modern people-oriented teaching concept. The multimedia teaching method prioritizes delicate and graceful PPT lesson plans which help with students understanding and acceptance, and meets to the upmost possibility the demand that learning be realized through having fun. This is good for evoking students learning initiative and makes them as proactive as possible in the learning process.b. Help to enrich students knowledge and exploit their intelligenceBesides transforming textbook knowledge into PPT lesson plans, multimedia teaching also encompasses colorful pictures of background information and extensive contents about the themes of the texts so that the students can learn more about humanities, the society and sciences. Besides, the PPT lesson plans can motivate students to think and have discussions through pictures, textual contents and sounds, which will contribute to students intelligence exploitation. Unknowingly, the students enrich their knowledge on the one hand and broaden their horizons as well as improve their abilities to think and express themselves on the other hand. c. Multimedia teaching helps students to master knowledge and skillsIn multimedia teaching, students can get in touch with diverse knowledge, eg, the collection of information, the downloading of online resources and the making of PPT lesson plans. Teachers can appropriately assign tasks to students and let the students design their own PPT lesson plans so as to make it possible for both teachers and students to share resources and exchange ideas. Thus, the students can consolidate the knowledge they have learnt, improve their skills and develop their abilities.The principles of multimedia teachinga. The principle of objectivesMultimedia classroom teaching is an orderly controlled process, which has a very strong purpose of teaching objectives. The design of its PPT lesson plans serves specific teaching contents and disseminates knowledge amid fun with a view to enabling students to skilfully master linguistic rules, improve their listening and speaking abilities and skilfully communicate in English. Thus, multimedia can be applied in each and every chain of instruction. The making of PPT lesson plans is especially important. The materials selected in a lesson plan must be relevant to its teaching contents, and all the teaching contents or tasks must be reasonably arranged in accordance with its teaching requirements and teaching contents. Each knowledge plate must be in proportion and time distribution must be reasonable. We should avoid stubbornly pursuing, blindly downloading online resources and neglecting accomplishing teaching tasks for the sake of seeking entertainment. b. The principle of interactive teachingMultimedia instruction emphasizes interaction between the teacher and the students. In the process of multimedia teaching, it is imperative to give full play to the teachers guiding role and the students proactivity. The sounds, words and pictures in PPT lesson plans should fully motivate students minds, encourage them to think and have discussions, lead them to analyze and comprehend passages, and promote communications between students as well as between students and teachers so as to establish harmonious teacher-student and student-student relations. Traditional instruction tends to neglect students own initiative and focuses on rigid textbook-based knowledge indoctrination, making teachers and students lack in enthusiasm for teaching and learning, estranging teachers and students due to the absence of interaction and impeding the smooth running of teaching and learning activities.c. The principle of being lively and funnyWhat most distinguishes multimedia teaching from conventional teaching is the use of materials that combine pictures, texts and sounds. So, the PPT lesson plans used in multimedia teaching must make students feel ready and happy to accept and participate in. Hence, the lead-in part must be lively, funny, concise and easy. The part regarding text learning should vary in form, avoid the boring parsing of words and characters and make comprehension and digestion full of fun for students by way of lively examples and interesting pictures. Multimedia teaching resources encompass everything. Pictures and videos of all kinds are available and styles of PPT lesson plans are colorful. Teachers should constantly collect materials, design and recondition layouts, and enhance the level of PPT lesson plan making to process boring textbook knowledge in order to comprehensively improve students integrated skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing in a lively and funny mode. The design and application of multimedia PPT lesson plansMultimedia PPT lesson plans should meet the principle of objectives, the principle of interactive teaching and the principle of being lively and funny. Conventional blackboard-writing requires writing and brushing what is written on the blackboard repeatedly to pass on knowledge, which greatly hinders the quantity and efficiency of information input and makes it impossible for students to retrieve contents that they have not noted down. With the interference of multimedia, a mass of contents can appear continuously at intervals of a few seconds. Pages can roll up or down at a light click and contents that have not been fully transcribed can be repeatedly re-presented to the students. Attention-worthy problems vis-vis multimedia instructionAs a medium of information transmission, multimedia has advantages that conventional mediums can never parallel. In the mean time, it also has limitations. While teaching via multimedia, teachers should take notice of the following problems:a. Timely change classroom environments so as not to let students constantly stay in rays of dark lights, for example, turn off the projector during hiatuses in which students are asked to do some reading or carry out some discussion or draw the curtains to let fresh air and sunshine in. b. In seasons and classes that make fatigue more probable, more refreshing picture or layouts should be adopted in PPT lesson plans to pep up the students. And on sum