初中英语口语教学的课堂管理.doc

初中英语口语教学的课堂管理Abstract This paper focuses on the classroom management in junior high school oral lesson. An active and harmonious atmosphere with rational authority of the teachers and their good rapport with the students has a great influence on promoting students speaking ability. Efficient classroom management can be achieved when three conditions are met. First, in an oral lesson, both teachers and students need to play various roles on the basis of mutual cooperation and thus create a harmonious atmosphere for speaking. The teacher plays such important roles as organizer, controller, assessor, prompter, and participant. While the teacher plays his or her roles in a language classroom, the students are also responsible for their learning and playing a lot of roles. Second, the most common student groupings in oral lesson are lockstep, pair work and group work. Third, discipline means a code of conduct which binds a teacher and a group of students together so that learning can be more effective. This paper analyzes three common kinds of indisciplined acts in oral English lesson and some useful teaching solutions have been put forward as well.Key Word classroom management; oral English lesson; junior high school 摘 要 愉快、和谐的课堂气氛，良好的师生关系和理性的教师权威，有助于学生英语的学习。行之有效的口语课堂管理受三大因素影响。首先，教师和学生扮演恰当的角色为英语口语练习创造一个和谐的环境。教师作为教学的组织者, 掌控者, 评估者, 提升者, 及参与者在课堂教学中的作用不可言喻。在教师进行言传身教的同时, 学生也履行他们的职责，在口语课上扮演着相应的角色。其次，根据活动要求, 在口语课堂上学生会进行各类小组活动, 最常见的是一对一练习和分组活动。最后，课堂纪律作为一种制约教师和学生的行为规范, 对保证课堂教学活动的顺利进行是必不可少的。笔者指出三类最常见的学生违纪行为，并根据这三大类违纪行为提出了一些相应的应对措施。良好的课堂气氛是初中口语教学顺利进行的先决条件。关键词 课堂管理；英语口语课；初中1. IntroductionClassroom management is one of the most significant factors that contribute to the efficiency of the teaching and learning activities, especially in junior high school oral English lesson. A dynamic and harmonious atmosphere with rational authority of the teachers and their good rapport with students has a great influence on improving students speaking ability. In oral English lesson, teachers organize what goes on in the classroom and try to create a relaxed atmosphere so that students have a good opportunity to speak English in class. Efficient classroom management can be achieved when teachers born in mind the following three conditions:(1) The teacher and the student play appropriate roles.(2) The students are grouped according to the speaking activities.(3) Discipline and harmony in classroom speaking.2. Factors affecting classroom managementNancy K. Hill, in her essay “Teaching as Mountaineering” establishes her idea that “the mountaineer accepts the guides leadership role, because the guide has a quiet authority about each of them. Both them recognize that the journey depends upon close cooperation and active participation by each member of the group”1. This is true of speaking in a foreign language. Both teachers and students need to play various roles on the basis of mutual cooperation and thus create an effective and harmonious classroom atmosphere for speaking.2.1 Teacher rolesClassroom management is the way teachers organize what goes on in the classroom. So many people consider the role of the teacher a significant component of efficient classroom management. However, some researchers regard the role of the teacher as part of the design of methodology or approach. As Richard and Rodgers in the book Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching point out “different approaches stipulate different roles for the teacher”2. Although different approaches stipulate different teacher roles, there are some common roles that teachers play in most of the approaches concerning classroom speaking. Based on the function that the teacher performs in different activities, Harmer defines “the teachers roles as organizer, controller, assessor, prompter, and participant” OrganizerThe most crucial and difficult role played by a language teacher is to be an organizer. The major responsibility in organizing activities is increasingly important for the teacher because nowadays task-based activities are advocated in many approaches. It is true of speaking a foreign language. Speaking tasks or activities motivating the students to participate are the key for a successful junior high school oral English lesson. It is in doing this that teachers have the most freedom and most challenge, but there are two aspects they must keep in mind. First, as the beginners, students pronunciation is poor, so it is necessary for the teacher to integrate some pronunciation work. However, great care should be taken over the distinction between pronunciation and phonetics. Although phonetic rules regarding what sounds a letter or a cluster of letters should be pronounced are helpful for students to develop the ability to cope with English pronunciation, they are more abstract and less meaningful. So the teaching of pronunciation should focus on the students ability to identify and produce English sounds themselves instead of focusing on reading and writing phonetic transcripts of words. Stress and intonation are important and should be taught from the very beginning. In the example below, different intonations for “sorry” indicate different meanings. A neutral tone would indicate a normal apology. However, a sharp falling tone or a rising tone would mean the opposite.Teacher: Would you please turn down the radio a little bit?Students: Sorry.(No, I dont want to.)OrStudents: Sorry? (What did you say?)Second, before students start the activity, its vital for the teacher to give instructions clearly and concisely so that students know what to do and how to do it. Think about both what you are going to say, and how you are going to say it. However, especially with elementary learners, even simple, clear, familiar language is not always sufficient to get complex message across. So the students may need a demonstration of the activity as well. Teachers can help learners understand what they say in English by simplifying their speech and using gesture or mime. “It is essential for a teacher to be a bit of an actor. That is part of the technique of teaching, which demands that every now and then a teacher should put on an act to make his or her lesson interesting and vivid. Children, especially young children live in a world that is rather larger than life” ControllerIn oral English lesson, the freer time given to students to do speaking activities, the more easily the class will be out of control. So the teachers control over the activities can help to run the class smoothly and efficiently. For instance, when students do speaking tasks, it is very important for the teacher to control the time. Especially when students do pair work, the teacher should require them to practice within a certain time. One of the characteristics of successful speaking tasks is that students have the maximum foreign talk. However, the duration of one lesson is limited. How to make sure that students can have the maximum foreign talk in such a short time? Obviously, an appropriate degree of control by the teacher over the class is vital and absolutely necessary. Besides the teachers control can ensure that the students use certain target language items and their production has a degree of accuracy. A very thing concerning class-control that the teacher must not neglect is the degree of control over the class. Only appropriate degree of the control brings about efficiency. Over-control will do no less harm to students than no control at all. Some teachers use terms like controlled practice, half-controlled practice, and free practice which indicate the different degrees of control over the activities on the part of the teacher. There are a lot of oral practice activities, which can be sorted into two classes: oral accuracy practice and oral fluency practice. When doing accuracy practice, it is necessary for teachers to control accuracy practice, because the main objective of it is to get learners to begin to produce formally correct versions of new items. On the other hand, in oral fluency practice, the main objective is to get them to use the items in conversations and other communication without hesitation, even if they make mistakes. So the teacher should half control or even free control oral fluency activities.2.1.3 Assessor It is the teachers responsibility to make assessment of the students performance. As an assessor, the teacher does two things: correcting mistakes and organizing feedback. Hedge, T in his book Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom points out “In many foreign language situations, where there is little exposure to English or practice available in the community, error correction is an expected role for the teacher”5. Speech is spontaneous, that is, speech is full of false starts, repetitions, incomplete sentences, and short phrases. So, should the teacher expect the students to produce complete sentences without mistakes in the language classroom? That depends on what type of activities the teacher organizes. Naturally, the way the teacher gives feedback and correction should be different. “In accuracy work, the emphasis should be on the language forms, and in fluency work, the emphasis should be on effective and hesitation-free communication”6. Another important thing the teacher should be concerned is that they should not themselves correct the students errors but help the students to self-correct. It is an untrue common assumption among teachers and students that it is the teachers job to correct students, which will result in students passive study and non-ability to correct themselves. The trick for teachers is to get students used to self-correcting, and to give them help when necessary. There is a common three-step method that teachers use for helping junior high school students to self-correct. (1) The teacher should first give students the opportunity to correct themselves, helping as necessary (self-correction).(2) If one student cannot self-correct, the teacher should invite other students to make the correction (peer correction).(3) If no other students can make the correction, the teachers should make the correction themselves (teacher correction).Organizing feedback is an effective way to evaluate students performance so that students can see how well they are doing. When monitoring the class, teachers can take notes that will help them to provide accurate feedback later. After students finish the tasks, they can deal with major errors they noted like this: they can select students to give examples of what they said or report on what they did, or they can write examples on the board for the students to correct. Students at the age of 13-15 are fear of “losing face” in front of their peers, so when organizing feedback, the teacher should pay attention not to hurt them, but focus on students success or progress, trying to combine encouragement with honest evaluation and useful feedback, so that success-oriented learning atmosphere can be created.2.1.4 PrompterWhile students are doing the activity, may it be a pair activity or a group activity, it is inevitable that they come across difficulties of one kind or another. Then the teachers role at this time is a prompter. His or her obligation is to help and encourage students. For instance: When teaching the topic Why is Beth crying?(unit 5 Project English Grade Eight), there is a word “blue” in the sentence “she looks so blue and unhappy” that puzzles students. At this time, the teacher should explain the “blue” means “bad mood” in eastern countries; when a student couldnt answer the question, the teacher can give hints; when a student finishes with a very short answer. The teacher can elicit more by saying “and” “Anything else?” “Yes, but why?” .One thing the teacher must concern is that they should use the foreign language for classroom management. “This approach involves exploiting for language learning not only the planned activities, but also the classroom management that revolves around them”7. It provides a rich source of communicative needs in the foreign language classroom, which exert a subtle influence on training students spoken ability. Nowadays, many teachers use the students mother tongue in class. Although it may often be a necessary decision in the interests of organizing the lessons clearly and efficiently, it also means sacrificing valuable opportunities for well-motivated foreign language use and devaluing the foreign language as a vehicle for communication.2.1.5 ParticipantThe process of the classroom teaching is the process of the emotional intercourse between the teacher and the student. A dynamic and harmonious atmosphere with rational authority of the teachers and their good rapport with the students has a great influence on the efficiency of students learning. Once the teacher has finished giving instructions and the activity has started, the teacher should not stand in front of the classroom with nothing to do. He or she should be mobile and monitor what the students are saying and take notes for feedback. Besides monitoring the class, the teacher can also join one or two groups as an ordinary participant, which is a good chance for teachers to foster an affectionate and cooperative atmosphere. Young children at the age of 13 to 15 are fond of those teachers who are friendly to them, and they hope teachers can be their good friends. Of course, the basic require for the teacher being a participant should not dominate or appear to be authoritative, although it is a good chance for students to practice English with someone who speaks it better than themselves. In a word, it encourages the teacher to participate in students activities in task-based teaching methods.2.2 Student rolesWhile the teacher has his or her roles in a language classroom, the students are also responsible for their learning. In an oral lesson, the students should play a lot of roles. First, the student should be a good listener. In oral English lesson, its important for the students to listen to their teacher carefully and give their attention to the information given by both teachers and classmates. Before doing the activities, they should be absorbed in the instructions the teacher given, so that they can ensure how to start an activity, or what to do next, or what to say next. During the communication, they should attend to the information given by their partners and then think how to continue the conversation. Second, the student should be a cooperator. Cooperation seems very important in oral lesson. In oral lesson, in response to the need of the tasks, students are often divided into groups of different sizes. All students in one group need to work with together, making conversations and solving problems cooperatively. As long as one group member is lack of cooperation, the activity cant be finished smoothly and effectively. Last but not the least, the students should be an individual learner. They must subconsciously learn to work independently in class or at home, taking full responsibility for their own performance and learning. Generally speaking, speaking is not carried out individually. However, lesson planning before speaking can be done in individual. When doing lesson planning, it requires students to search correlative information before class, which is good for promoting autonomous degree of students. Learner autonomy plays a key role in success of foreign learning. There is such a saying in China “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and youll feed him for a lifetime”. Learner autonomy has been admitted to be such fishing ability that can benefit a persons whole life. In a word, individual study is absolutely useful for enhancing students speaking ability.3. Classroom management in oral English lesson3.1 Student Grouping In oral English lesson, for much of the class time, students are broken down to groups of different sizes that depend on the activities. This is an important feature of todays language classroom. The most common student groupings in oral lesson are lockstep, pair work and group work.3.1.1 Lockstep“Lockstep is the stage where all the students are under the control of the teacher. That is, the whole class attends to the same activity at the same rhythm and pace”8. Lockstep is often adopted when the teacher is making a presentation, checking exercise answers, or doing accuracy reproduction. Before doing pair and group work, the teacher should make presentations first. Take the dialog Why is Beth crying? for example, the teacher can play the tape first with students just listening. Then play the second and third time to ask students to read following it. Until students are familiar with this dialog, the teacher can ask a student to play Helens role and develop a conversation like this:Teacher: Hello, Helen. Anything wrong? Helen: Its Beth. She looks so blue and unhappy.Teacher: Oh dear! Im sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?Helen: She is crying in the washroomAfter the drilling, the teacher can require students to make the conversations with their partner within 3-5 minutes. When doing lockstep, the teacher should not speak too much. If the teachers talk too much of the time, he/she will run the risk of “jug-and-mug” method, and thus take away valuable practice time from the students, though his/her speech could be a good model and authentic input. What the teacher should do is to elicit replies or answers from the students as much as possible.3.1.2 Pair work and Group work “Pair work is strongly advocated where communicative methodology is applied. As the name suggests, two students or learners work together on a certain task or exercise”9 . Group work is a le