The Function Of Short-play Creation And Performance In Junior High School English Teaching

It is required by the new "English Curriculum Criterion" that equal emphasis should be put on both language competence and communicative competence and that the proficiency of students'listening, speaking, reading and writing should be developed simultaneously. But the recent status of English teaching shows that it's very difficult for us to fulfill the requirement. Lack of language situations, inadequate linguistic input, and the severe tendency of polarization among students are all problems to be solved, which obstruct student's development. The present paper suggests that appropriately utilizing the teaching strategies, the creation and performance of English short-play can, to a certain extent, effectively settle the problems worrying teachers for a long time. To prove the strategy scientific, feasible and effective, I well study and illustrate it both in theory and practice.In the exordial part, the current common phenomenon and problems in domestic English teaching are examined. In this chapter, the author also puts forward the hypothesis that the short-play-creating-and-performing strategy can be applied to English teaching as an approach to solve the existing problems. By defining the performance of short-play and summarizing the relevant domestic and overseas literature on introducing the creation and performance of short play to language teaching, the author expounds the significance of this teaching strategy.In the theoretical research, some theories related to the hypothesis of the creation and performance of short-play are discussed, such as humanistic psychology, second language acquisition, communicative approach and cooperative learning. By connecting the theories with the strategy, the author argues that it is not only feasible, but also necessary to introduce the creation and performance of short plays into English teaching.In the practical research, it is mainly introduced in detail how the author organized and prepared the students of experimental class to create and perform English short plays in and after class. In addition, an introduction of a typical lesson on creating and performing short plays is illustrated, as well as the reflection on it. Chapter Four introduces the two language proficiency tests and the questionnaire survey which were conducted in both experimental class and control class. The data collected through the tests are all analyzed by Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPSS), which is generally considered as one of standard statistical software. In the comparison of the statistics, it can be concluded that the ability of the experimental class students to use English synthetically has been improved more noticeably than that of the control class students in the past one year. What's more, the experimental class students are also excelled in fostering students' positive attitude and interest in learning English.The conclusion summarizes several effects made by the creation and performance of short-play on both students and teachers. The present research thus not only proves the feasibility of this teaching strategy, but also demonstrates its validity in English teaching in general.