| Based on theoretical and practical considerations, this thesis aims to illustrate the improvement of interactive activities on primary pupils' interest in English learning. The present writer proposes some suggestions on primary pupils' interest activation and lists some important guidelines on the organization of interactive classroom activities. In the mean time, it aims at drawing people's attention to the significance of interest activation in primary English classrooms, thus, help to build a better perspective for future primary English teaching.As the importance of primary English teaching is gradually valued by the whole society in recent years, primary English, as a compulsory course, is making itself into primary schools. With its further development, to a greater and greater degree experts and teachers are worrying about such problems as those in course design, the inadequacy of teacher resources, the lack of equipments and facilities and etc. However, all these defects would find expression in their influences on learners, in this thesis, the primary school pupils. To the present writer, the matter of greatest emergency is to activate them, who for rather a long time, are taught as "passive containers of knowledge". Only when they are sufficiently interested in English learning, as "active seekers of knowledge", they will involve themselves in learning with enthusiasm and zest. Furthermore, interest activation agrees with the demands of the Basic Requirements for Primary English Course issued by the National Ministry of Education in the fall of 2001.The thesis begins with an introduction of the general conditions of primary school English classroom, revealing problems of all kinds, and the further presentation of the objectives of the study.Then the writer presents a rather detailed summary of the fruitful findings on interest, which is for long a cross-disciplinary issue in psychology, pedagogy andthe field of second language acquisition. The study of interest in a broader sense as a psychological and pedagogical issue by Russian researchers is mainly influenced by Pavlov's theory of nervism, according to which interest is a kind of reflex raised to the level of second signal system. In his book, Theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget points out "interest is the one common and powerful example of affect at work influencing our selection of intellectual activities"(quoted in Wadsworth, 1989: 30). Following his line, Wadsworth (Wadsworth, 1989) further emphasizes the significance of exploring children's spontaneous interest and advocates peer interaction for a child's cognitive development. In the field of second language acquisition, the study of interests is generally subordinate to the study of motivation, which counts as a crucial individual factor to successful language learning. Gardner (Brown, 2001) relates interest with intrinsic motivation and proposes to foster learner's motivation by activating their interest. Still the importance of interest can be inferred from Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis, which centers around the lowering of anxiety and stress.(Krashen, 1983) Finally, Wilga.M.Rivers' idea is presented, for she integrates interest closely with interaction, which counts as the focusing on conveying and receiving messages that contains information of interest (Rivers, 2000). On the contrary, domestic studies on interest in second language acquisition, especially its influence on primary English teaching is rather limited and non-systematic, although it is gradually attracting more attention.Chapter 3 sets out the theoretical ideas that help form the thesis. It begins with an analysis of the relationship between interest and motivation. Concerning the limitation of primary pupil's psychological development, the present writer proposes the application of interactive activities in primary English teaching. Principles and features of interactive classroom are given, together with a list of interactive activities.Chapter 4 introduces the experiment, whic...
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