The Exploration And Applicaiton Of The TARGET Teaching Model To Improving Undearchievers Of English In Senior High School

Underachievers in school education are a group existing objectively and commonly.Among them there are admittedly some who have lagged behind and fallen well short of thenormal level because of ill health or low intelligence, but there are more who have becomeunderachievers despite normal intelligence and good health just for some psychological orexternal reasons. This group hinders not only a school to achieve its teaching objectives, butalso the growth and development of these young students, even the harmony of families andsociety. Although this problem has attracted great attention of researchers and teachers, andconsiderable research has been done home and abroad, the situation is not improved quite alot. As for ESL in senior high school in China, the number of underachievers of English iseven larger compared with those of other subjects, owing to the characteristics of this foreignlanguage itself, the cultural differences and improper teaching methods. However, the goodnews is that the latter’s underachievement can be reversible. With their own efforts and theirteachers’ help, these students can become excellent ones.After doing a literature search, I carried out a survey and an interview among some freshstudents of my school and then some tests were given. Finally I found that the underachieversgenerally lacked strong learning motivation, which is considered one of the maindeterminants of foreign language learning achievement. As the inducement of learning,motivation enables a learner to make constant efforts, and it also affects his/her learningstrategies, learning time and the final learning outcomes. The TARGET teaching modelproposed by Ames is based on Epstein’s six family structures concerning motivationstimulation. It deals with the stimulation of classroom learning motivation by adjusting sixclassroom structures: task design, authority distribution, recognition practices, groupingarrangement, evaluation practices, and time allocation. This model integrates the factors ofself-esteem, self-efficacy, belief, and emotion, focusing on the process of students’development, emphasizing the development of their ability, and encouraging them to focusmore on the study itself instead of the competition or their performance in the community.This paper is based on the theory of TARGET teaching model and practiced it inclassroom English teaching. In the classroom experiment, the underachievers of English weretaught according to their aptitude. Heterogeneous intelligences grouping encouragedco-operation among the group members, denting competition between individuals. In thisway they got really involved in the study and participated in the task design and time allocation as well as recognition, which allowed them the right to decide their learningcontent, as well as their own learning pace, making them owner of their study. Since theycould decide how difficult their tasks were, and how fast to carry out the tasks, theunderachievers could have the chances to accumulate success experience, whichconsequently counteracted the effects of their past failures. Gradually, these students built upconfidence, thus their learning motivation were stimulated and sustained. After a6-monthexperiment, the data was analyzed with the PASW Statistics18.0, finding the TARGETteaching model effective in improving the underachievers through stimulating their Englishlearning motivation.