A Study Of Extracurricular Activities In Secondary Vocational School English Teaching

Extracurricular learning is one of the most important parts of the whole teaching and learning system. English as a practical subject in vocational school, extracurricular activity English teaching is much more important than other subjects. Krashen(1981)divided the whole process of language learning into two parts, conscious language learning and unconscious language acquisition. In actual vocational English teaching and learning, however, the time for classroom teaching and learning is too limited and mostly constrained to study vocabulary and grammar. There is no much time left for practical use. Extracurricular activity makes an excellent complement to classroom teaching.This thesis begins with an introduction to the general view of the study. The author proposes the research questions for discussion: How to create the atmosphere to increase the students'interest and confidence in learning English? What's the environment for extracurricular activities? Are there some problems in extracurricular activities? How to solve the problems? Then Krashen's Second Language Acquisition theory and Krashen and Terrell's Natural Approach theory are introduced as the author's theoretical foundation to be applied in the extracurricular activities. The author tries to build up natural environment in extracurricular activities as a process of acquisition and gives a brief introduction to the basic features of extracurricular activities. Based on the theories, the author designs the activity management and various kinds of English extracurricular activities which are used in the experimental group.Therefore, the author sets up a one-term research program for two classes in Qingdao Foreign Affairs Service Vocational School in the first term of 2009-2010 after the questionnaire on extracurricular activities. The comparative method is used here. Various organized extracurricular activities are employed in the experimental group during the extra period, while the control group is asked to do their English homework, revise their English lesson or do something related to English. The students'English levels are tested before and after the experiment.The author takes these forms to build extracurricular activities during the experiment: 1 English games 2 Discussion in English 3 The appreciation of the English movies 4 English debates 5 English drama. The author joins in organizing every activity, collects and analyzes the data from the questionnaire, the pre-test and post-test.According to the outcome of experiment, the author draws the conclusion that creating atmosphere with ease can increase the students'interest and confidence in learning English, and natural English environment is necessary for extracurricular activities. The author also makes a series of discussions and suggestions for the problems existing in the extracurricular activities.