A Preliminary Study Of Oral English Teaching For Sports Junior High Students Based On An Anchored Instruction Model

Anchored instruction is a teaching model based on the theory of constructivism andsituated cognition and learning. The core of this kind of teaching model is to show anarrative story under a real macrocontext by multimedia like videos when learners learnsomething new. During the process, with the useful information which students obtainfrom the embedded data in the video, students learn to find the problem, analyze theproblem and solve the problem with their group members or by themselves. The anchoredinstruction mode has the features of actuality, intuition and dynamics. In the teachingprocess, teachers, as guides and helpers, join in the task and set up the scaffolding forstudents. Meanwhile, students, as learning subjects, construct their own knowledgenetwork through the practical activities.This study aims at carrying out oral English teaching with anchored instruction for thefollowing reasons. First, New English Curriculum for Chinese Primary Schools andJunior/Senior Middle Schools in2011makes new demands for oral English teaching.Teachers should try to improve their students’ communicative competence in an actualcontext. Second, the oral English test has played an important part of the junior high schoolgraduate examination in Suzhou since2000and has received great attention. Third, thesubjects of the study are sports school students with some particularities. Such students arepoor in English without much confidence in themselves or interest in English. They arelively and active and they have more demands for the practicability of knowledge. The oralEnglish teaching with anchored instruction can conform to the students’ actual situationand meet their needs.This study is intended to explore whether the anchored instruction for oral Englishteaching can help the junior high school students from the sports school to show moreinterest in English and improve their scores of the oral English examination and finallycultivate the capability of skillfully communicating in English in their daily life. Throughthe literature review, including anchored instruction, the theory of constructivism, and situated cognition and learning, this thesis generalizes the research on anchored instructionat home and abroad, and makes a practical experimental plan according to the sportsschool students’ actual situation. In the early stage of the study, the experiment is based onthe results from the questionnaire for students, the interview for teachers in the sportsschool and the pre-test for the students’ oral English level. During the study, the authorreadjusts and rearranges the teaching material and teaching steps. These two tests arearranged in the middle and last stage of the study. The data of these tests are analyzed bySPSS and a conclusion is reached.Through the study, the author has come to know more about the current situation ofthe oral English teaching in the sports school and put forward a feasible teaching scheme.This study proves that:(1) Oral English teaching based on anchored instruction model issuitable for sports students.(2) After the experiment, the students’ ability to use English tosolve problems in daily life is improved. Some students can communicate with others andexpress their own thoughts in English.(3) Through the experiment, the sports schoolstudents have achieved better results in the oral English test. It is the author’s hope that thisstudy can guide the oral English teaching of the sports school and offer an operationalprogram for the teachers of such schools.