A Study On Lead-in Strategies In Middle School Classrooms

Lead in, as the first teaching step of a class, is called teaching organizing, and one of the most basic and important steps in the English classroom teaching as well. In task-based language classes, it also plays the role of the preparation phase before the whole class-task is carried out. It is obviously a short period but can not be underestimated. With a proper lead in, students will be more concentrated and focused in the classroom teaching process, which makes learners more interested in what they are going to learn. Hence, learners may take an active part in learning while finishing the whole class-task. As a result, a lead-in step contributes much to having a smooth and successful class. However, only a little study was found, which was about the research work on the lead-in step of a class, and most of which was only about the experiences of teaching without further theory support so far. This research will extend a full study of the subject theories, linguistic and language learning theories presented through the textbooks Fun with English.In addition, to choose different ways and methods of the lead-in step, which is one of the ways to achieve different teaching objectives, is well worth considering and preparing.With the promulgation and operation of New Curriculum Standards, objects have already been set in terms of learner needs at the service of teachers and learners. The thesis takes the lead-in step as an object study through questionnaire and interview research while combining with the task-based approach that the New Curriculum Standards recommends. On the basis of survey and analysis of the three compositions, which consist of students, teachers and teaching materials, it will discuss about a set of experiments using different lead-in strategies for efficiently introducing different new contents. The thesis will focus on the lead-in steps in the teaching of Fun with English from the point view of the second language classroom teaching. Through carrying out the experiments and analyzing different results of different lead-in strategies, the study tries its best to give the direction to lead-in step teaching in the aim of improving class-teaching efficiency.There are seven chapters in this thesis. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction, which gives a general account of the importance of the study and the study background home and broad. Chapter 2 and 3 are to explain the basic theory of the lead-in strategies and task-based language learning theory. Chapter 4 is to conduct a survey, research and consider the situation in the lead-in part of the class teaching both in the students' and the teachers' aspects respectively. Chapter 5 is also the research on the contents in the teaching of the English textbooks Fun with English from 7A—9B. Chapter 6 is to conduct a survey, research on the different results by using different lead-in methods in different classes. Chapter 7 is to draw a conclusion of the research.