Application Of Interactive Teaching Approach To English Listening And Speaking Class In Senior High Schools

Nowadays, due to the influence of National Matriculation Test, both students andteachers are merely concerned about the marks, ignoring the abilities of listening andspeaking, which results in the students'failure to communicate in English in real life.In view of the problems existing in English teaching of senior high school, the presentstudy, first of all, on the basis of literature review, defines the core concept"interaction"and explores the theories for interactive teaching. Secondly, by means of questionnaire andclassroom observation, the author investigates and analyzes the present condition ofinteractive teaching in listening and speaking classes of senior high school. Thirdly, theconclusion has been drawn about how to apply interactive teaching in listening andspeaking instruction.Interaction means the process in which two or more people convey their viewpointsand emotions to each other, exchange information and influence each other. Interactiveteaching theory focuses not only on the communication between teachers and students,among students, but also on the development of both teachers and students. Listening andspeaking is not unidirectional but bidirectional and the interactive activities are not justlimited to the activities between students and teachers, but also to the activities amongstudents and activities between groups. The following theories, such as the constructivetheory of Piaget, the democratic theory of Dewey, affective education of Rogers andInteraction Hypothesis of second language acquisition are the major theoretical bases forinteractive teaching.Through the questionnaire and classroom observation, it has been found out that onewayinteraction, partial interaction, superficial interaction and unorganized interaction arecommon while the teacher is carrying out interactive teaching in listening and speakingclasses.Based on the findings from the empirical research methods, the theories for interactiveteaching, and my the personal teaching experience, this study puts forward the followingpatterns of applying interactive teaching in listening and speaking classes: combinelistening, speaking and comprehension to create interactive activities in the game of wordguessing;provide situations to create interactive activities in role plays; pose pertinentquestions to create interactive activities in story-guessing; raise open-ended questions tocreate interactive activities in everyday duty report; encourage imagination to create interactive activities in adding a different end to the text; create interactive activities innewspaper-reading to broaden students'horizons.This study is of great benefit for senior high school English teachers to solve theexistent problems, apply interactive teaching in listening and speaking activities, andimprove the efficiency of teaching listening and speaking.