A Study On The Application Of The Situational Method To Senior High English Classroom Teaching

Situational Method (SM hereinafter) is a widely used teaching method in English classroom teaching. The proper use of SM in English classroom can stimulate students’ positive emotional response, arouse students’ interest in English learning and enhance students’ willingness to participate in teaching and learning activities, thus to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in English language teaching and learning.As a traditional teaching method, it has always been keeping the attention of the researchers and classroom practitioners all the time. However, studies and practice at home and abroad have concentrated themselves on preliminary and intermediate stage and mostly on native language teaching and learning. That has been due to the belief that SM is more appropriate to preliminary and intermediate stage. Few researches on SM have been carried out with English teaching at senior high.Based on the constructivism and Krashen’s input hypothesis and filter hypothesis, and the actual situation of English classroom teaching at senior high, the present research aims at finding out whether SM is suitable for senior high English teaching and learning. The research is to answer the following questions:1) Is the SM practical and feasible for senior high English classroom?2) How does the SM promote the senior high students’English learning?3) What should the teacher be aware of when adopting the SM in English teaching at senior high?Both quantitative research and qualitative research have been designed:1) Quantitative research:Questionnaires were administered before and after the experiment, and there were also a pre-test and post-test prior and post to the experiment. The data were collected and processed by SPSS17.0.2) Qualitative research:After the experiment, the researcher has done an interview with5teachers and10students to get their reflection about SM. The talk had been recorded and processed. The research shows that, just as for low and intermediate stage, SM is also practical and feasible for senior high English classroom. With the introduction of SM, teachers are able to designing some situations similar to real life and context appropriate to language function by some means of multimedia and other supporting resources. It will help students to activate their positive affective factors, better the relations of the students and teachers and make the classroom atmosphere livelier. All these will result in strengthening their interest for English study and motivating them to learn by exploration. It is proved in the research that SM can greatly improve their practical ability for language use, as SM can help students to perceive the relevant context with the language form, optimize the channels of input, and better the input quality. Students can learn the new language in harmonious and friendly context. Teachers must be aware that, if they want to make SM successful in their senior high classroom, they should pay more attention to self-development as a teacher, change their concept about teaching and rely more on collective work with other teachers. They should also have more training on learning strategy with their students so that they can reach the goals set in the New English Curriculum Standard and make the best use of SM.