A Study Of The Cultivation Of English Learning Interest Of Senior High School Fine Arts Students

In recent years, there is a great increase in the number of fine arts students. Compared with the students in normal senior high schools, senior high school fine arts students have the following features:they are smart, creative and full of imagination; however, the general English proficiency of fine arts students is rather undesirable. More importantly, most of them do not have any interest in English learning. In the internship of Zhengzhou No.106Middle School, the author found that a number of subjective and objective factors resulted in the students’poor English proficiency and lacking of English learning interest. Teaching methods and teaching contents are the main factors affecting senior high school fine arts students’ English learning interest.In China, due to the influence of testing-orientated language teaching, the teachers of fine arts senior high schools try to tell their students some grammar knowledge, caring little about the situational communication teaching approach and multi-intelligences method, which are not beneficial to cultivating fine arts students’ language competence. As a result, the whole English class is one of dullness and depression. Fine arts students are not active with low English learning interest. It is natural that interest cultivation can yield the twice result with half the effort in English teaching. Keen interest can develop the students’curiosity about knowledge and arouse the students’strong learning motivation. Therefore, the thesis focuses on the cultivation of fine arts students’learning interest in order to improve their English proficiency.This thesis begins with an introduction to background and significance of the research. In the part of literature review about learning interest, some related researches at home and abroad are introduced including the concept of interest, classification and function of learning interest and the thesis discusses the importance of interest in English learning. The strategies of learning interest cultivation are provided by the theories of Krashen’Affective Filter Hypothesis, Dewey’Interest Theory and Alexander’s Non-intelligence Factors Theory. On the basis of these theoretical analyses, the thesis investigates into the current situation of English learning for senior high fine arts students in No.106Middle School of Zhengzhou city, and analyzes the factors that influence their English learning interest. The researcher took the two classes as the subjects. Class Nine served as the controlled class while Class Eight served as the experimental class. The traditional teaching methods are used in the controlled class and various different teaching methods, such as situational communication approach and multi-intelligences method, are used in the experimental class to activate the students’ English learning interest. Then the thesis makes descriptions and analyses of the collected data of the students’ pre-test and post-test achievements according to the format SPSS. On the basis of the data analysis, the author puts forward some suggestions and methods for cultivating fine arts students’English learning interest. The results of this experiment show that changing traditional classroom teaching mode and adopting a variety of teaching methods prove to be the effective strategies to improve the English proficiency of senior high school fine arts students.