Creating Effective Context In Children's Classroom English Teaching In China

As the base of language communication and interaction of human beings, context has attracted linguists' attention for a long time. They define and categorize it in various ways and from different angles. Since the 1990s, language teachers and researchers have come to realize the important significance of context in language teaching, trying to integrate the elements of context in classroom language teaching. The result of context-based teaching research is of great value to language teaching of various kinds, including children's English teaching in China.With the help of questionnaires, this thesis obtains the information about the situation of children's English teaching in China. The result from questionnaires shows that there are some problems needing to be resolved in Chinese children's English teaching. One of the problems is that context as one of the potential and influential considerations in children's English teaching has been neglected. Context creation is an easy, flexible, economical, and instantaneous method to improve Chinese children's English teaching, but unfortunately it has not attracted enough attention from language educators. For these reasons, the study of the medium and approaches of classroom context creation in children's English teaching becomes the main concern in this thesis.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction, in which the author gives the traditional definition of context, and presents the situation of Chinese children's English teaching. Chapter 2 first surveys what has been achieved by psychologists and language researchers in the study of children language, children psychology and SLA, and then it explores the nature of children's language interaction. Based on Krasen's five hypotheses, the paper discusses the relationship between these hypotheses and Chinese children's English teaching. Chapter 3 defines children's English teaching and creating context. By analyzing the reasons of creating context in language and foreign language teaching, it points out the unique significance of creating context in children's English teaching: the creating of lively and active environment in the classroom can help to reduce the influence of emotion filter, so that the children can obtain effective language input. The paper further emphasizes the favorable effects of efficient context: children's better understanding of language input, proper communication in the target language, activation of the children's sensational and cognitive facilities of judging, analyzing, association, and language expression. Chapter 4 draws support from some interrelated perspectives of SLA, pragmatics, children psychology and cognitive psychology, and it supplies three methods about how to create effective context (teacher's talk, teaching aids, language activities), and illustrates them by some vivid examples of teaching practice. Chapter 5 is a conclusion. In the process of creating contest in Children's English teaching in China, teachers should keep balance among the factors of participants, teaching materials and language activities, etc. Teachers of children's English should not only make use of static objects properly but dynamic elements rationally. In general, creating effective context in English teaching for children is not only helpful for improving children's English level, but also for their intelligence.