An Empirical Study On Using "Preview Outline" To Enhance The Students' Participation In Second Language Class

Preview is a traditional method language teachers like to use. As the interaction between students and teachers and the students' participation in the second language classroom become more and more important, researchers and language teachers pay more and more attention to preview. However, not all the preview tasks are useful for teacher-student interaction in the language class. A preview which is useful for the teacher-student interaction should 1) make the students know exactly what they should do; 2) be convenient for the teachers to give feedback; 3) be designed according what will do in the coming class and what the teachers want the students to prepare for the coming class. "Preview Outline" is a preview task which meets the three requirements of useful preview tasks. "Preview Outline" includes two parts. Part one is the tasks which can let the students get some ideas of the new items they will learn in the coming class. Part two is "what we will do in the class".Although preview tasks are common tasks in second language learning, there seems no research focus on whether they are really useful for the language class or not. This study will take "Preview Outline" as an example to find out if the preview tasks are really useful to second language class as people usually suppose.Students' participation and students' anxiety are two very important parts in language learning. A lot of researches indicate that student with high-participation and low-anxiety can get more from their language class.This study will use the videos and questionnaires to record the class with the "Preview Outline" and without the "Preview Outline". These records will be used to compare the students' participation and anxiety in these two kinds of classes to find out if the "Preview Outline" can increase the students' participation and decrease the anxiety.