The Observational Study Of Lead-in Activities In High-Quality English Classes Of Primary Schools

In English class,although lead-in activities account for only a few minutes,they are of great value to the whole English classroom teaching process.Effective and successful lead-in activities can establish the connection between students’ prior knowledge and new knowledge as well as attract students’ attention at the beginning of the class.Besides it can help students have a clear awareness of the learning objectives and lay a good foundation for the follow-up learning,thereby improve the teaching efficiency and achieve the teaching objectives.However,in the actual teaching,there are many problems in the lead-in activities of the English classroom,which give rise to the unsatisfactory effect.Therefore,the author adopts the classroom observation and script analysis to study the lead-in activities of high-quality English teachers in primary schools,explores their teaching characteristics and hopes to help the normal class English teachers to improve their designs of the lead-in activities.The research chooses the course videos of twenty-nine English teachers who participated in the Seventh National Primary School English Teaching Demonstration classes in 2014 as the research object,according to Bo Haiying’ s the Observational Table of Lead-in Activities in English Classes and the characteristics of the lead-in activities in primary schools,the author compiles the Observational Table of Lead-in Activities in High–Quality English Classes of Primary Schools.This paper observes and analyzes the lead-in activities of high-quality English classes in primary schools,taking script analysis as the supplementary means and to takes teachers’ teaching and students’ learning as the main perspectives of observation.The main observation points are: ways of lead-in activities,functions of lead-in activities,the characteristics of teachers’ language behavior in lead-in activities,the characteristics of teachers’ non-verbal behavior in lead-in activities,students participation in lead-in activities and duration of lead-in activities.In order to record the actual situation and understand the teaching situation of the high-quality English teachers in primary schools,the author uses some statistical tables to deal with the relevantdata of the lead-in activities.Based on Piaget’ s Cognitive Development Theory and Krashen’ s Input Hypothesis and Affective Filtering Hypothesis,the author summarizes the characteristics of lead-in activities in high-quality English classes of primary schools,analyzes their advantages and provides advice on the design of lead-in activities in normal classes for English teachers in primary schools.What’ s more,in order to and understand the characteristics of the current lead-in activities in English normal classes,the author observes the lead-in activities of five fifth-grade English teachers in Wopu Primary School.Finally the author draws the following conclusion.In the high-quality English classes,the lead-in activities are diversified and multi-functional;the teachers are highly professionally qualified,what’ s more,teachers show appropriate non-verbal behavior;the students are active in lead-in activities and the duration of lead-in activities is proper.In the normal English classes,there are a lot to be improved in each of the above mentioned aspects of the lead-in activities.Therefore the author suggests that the English teachers in the normal primary school English classes should choose the appropriate lead-in activities,and employ the different functions of lead-in activities to get the students ready for the class.Besides,teachers are supposed to improve classroom language literacy and have a clear awareness of the importance of their non-verbal behavior in lead-in activities;the teachers should encourage students to participate in classroom activities;finally,teachers should make sure the duration of lead-in activities is proper.