An Exploration Of Perceptual Mismatches In English Language Teaching Of Junior High School

There is an inevitable gap between speaker intention and listener interpretation in foreign language communication,which is defined as perceptual mismatch.Learners may encounter difficulties in understanding teachers intentions as a result of perceptual mismatches,and successful learning can not be promoted.In order to minimize perceptual mismatches,the author investigated teacher-student interactions in English language teaching to find out the sources of mismatches and propose countermeasures to minimize them.Therefore,three research questions were put forward:(1)What types of perceptual mismatches occur in English language teaching of junior high schools?(2)How do the types of perceptual mismatches differ in different grades?(3)What sources can be examined in these perceptual mismatches? And what countermeasures can be provided to minimize perceptual mismatches in English language teaching of junior high schools?In order to investigate perceptual mismatches in English language teaching of junior high schools,an investigation was conducted on 9 English teachers and about 900 students from three junior high schools in Qingdao by qualitative research.All of the teachers and students participated in classroom observation and 9 teachers combined with223 students participated in interview.Classroom observation was conducted to find out the frequency of different types of perceptual mismatches,and the situations where they occurred,and the results recorded with classroom observation scales were analyzed by Excel.After classroom observation,interview with teachers and students were conducted respectively to find out the sources of perceptual mismatches and the countermeasures to minimize perceptual mismatches,and the interview results were analyzed by NVivo 12.The research results can be drawn as follows.(1)Among all types of perceptual mismatches,Linguistic mismatch,Instructional mismatch,Pedagogic mismatch,Cultural mismatch,and Communicative mismatch occur more frequently.(2)Perceptual mismatches occur most frequently in grade 7 and least in grade 9,and the types of perceptual mismatches vary in different grades.Linguistic mismatches and Communicative mismatches occur most frequently in grade 7,while Pedagogic mismatches are the most frequent ones in grade 9.Besides,rural schools witness more perceptual mismatches compared with urban schools,especially Linguistic mismatch,Communicative mismatch,and Instructional mismatch.(3)The primary sources of perceptual mismatches can be concluded as follows.Firstly,teachers’ professional qualities need improving,especially in rural schools,where the teachers’ poor oral English and serious accents are prominent.Secondly,the teaching methods used by teachers are unitary and backward.Some teachers have been adopting spoon-feed vocabulary teaching for a long time,depriving students of their interests in learning vocabulary and bringing about undesirable vocabulary learning results.Thirdly,the classroom activities designed by teachers are not appropriate,by which students’ vocabulary storage cannot be enlarged,and their cultural awareness cannot be cultivated.And students’ speaking abilities cannot be developed in individual schools that focus only on written exercises while ignoring oral training.Fourthly,teachers are not able to accurately grasp students’ levels of learning and psychological development.Therefore,three countermeasures to minimize perceptual mismatches are proposed.Firstly,teachers’ professional development should be attached importance to,and efficient teacher training should be implemented to develop teachers’ professional abilities and improve their self-improvement awareness.Secondly,the appropriate activities concerned with vocabulary training,English oral practice,and cultural awareness cultivation should be implemented to enlarge students’ vocabulary storage,develop their listening and speaking abilities and cultivate cultural awareness.Thirdly,teachers are supposed to center on students to accurately grasp their learning and psychological development levels and design appropriate learning tasks.