A Comparative Study Of Classroom Activities Between Urban And Rural Primary Schools

The New English Curriculum Standard has made it clear that English teaching in primary school should proceed from the students’ learning interests, experience of everyday life, and different degrees of cognition, fully utilize the way of activities. And in the meantime it should strongly promote learning through firsthand experience, constant practice, active participation, greater cooperation and effective communication, and ultimately realizing the aim of developing students’ all-round ability to employ language. While classroom activities, as one of the most significant components in classroom teaching, play a considerable role in students’ learning, so it is of great significance to investigate classroom activities. Through surveying the problems in English classroom activities both from teachers and students, it will guide teachers to design classroom activities from a new perspective and make classroom activities more efficient by utilizing various resources as well as instruct students to take part in classroom activities more actively and willingly, thus improving students’ communicative competence and comprehensive language skills at last.The research in this thesis was done in Xiaxian county which is situated at the south of Shanxi province. Two primary schools were involved in this research:one is Xinjianlu primary school which is located in the county town, the other one is Zhongqili primary school which lies in the countryside. The aggregate number of the students amounts to160who were drawn at random from the third grade to sixth grade in two schools, each grade with20students. And ten teachers from both schools also participate in the investigation. The thesis makes the investigations based on a semester’s classroom observation, questionnaire, and interview, aiming at discovering how the classroom activities conducted in Xiaxian county.Investigating and researching the EFL classroom activities in urban and rural primary schools from students and teachers, the thesis puts forward some questions as following:1). What’s the attitude of students/teachers toward English learning and classroom activities? What kinds of activities do they like?2). What difficulties may students meet through participating classroom activities? And how do they overcome them?3). What factors do the teachers consider while designing, implementing, and evaluating classroom activities? Do they self-reflect after class?The study found that some teachers have not paid much attention to classroom activities, and they are apt to employ group discussions and role-playing, whilst not what students expected. And quite many a activity form lacks elaborately design and diversity. Moreover, the content of activities some teachers designed is often tedious and boring, without any novelty and flexibility, which can hardly intrigue students’ participation enthusiasm. Besides, too concentration is paid on the textbook and some teachers just practice the sentences or dialogues without considering the authentic and effective communicative purpose. Some of them can not carry out a timely, effective and diversified evaluation which will play a positive effect on arousing students’ attention and retaining their interest high. On the other hand, most students usually prefer lively and interesting activity forms, such as playing games, singing English songs, watching movies clips, however, in the process of implementing classroom activities, due to introverted character, less confidence and the fear of making mistakes, some students are not positive enough and thus can not acquire the basic language knowledge and skills on the spot.At last, the thesis puts forward the countermeasures against the above problems. Encourage students to participate in the activities positively and master the right learning strategies. And besides applying the newly learned knowledge, students should also be aware of developing their cooperative ability. To activate students’ learning interest, teachers should design a variety of activities by taking general teaching outline, student learning interest and language level into account. And more attention should be placed on the cultivation of students’ communicative competence. In addition, diversified evaluation and active feedback towards students performance should also be provided. And teachers should improve their professional skills as well.