An Empirical Study On The Application Of Situational Teaching In Oral English Classes Of Junior Middle School Students

On account of the importance of oral English and the necessity of the oral teaching reform in junior middle school, this study proposes situational teaching approach on the improvement of oral English proficiency, with constructivism as its theoretical basis. Situational teaching is to create the situations with real problems or real events, and students understand knowledge, and construct meanings by themselves in the process of exploring the events or solving the problems. Since the situational teaching method is formed in the 70’s of this century, it has gradually become the basic thought and the direction of teaching in language teaching. Moreover, the way students learn is changed and the teachers are encouraged to create the teaching situations, gradually the students can actively participate, cooperate, explore, and be diligent in specific situations, all of which belong to the contents of the curriculum reform.Therefore, this thesis proposes the specific research questions, as follows:’(1) Is situational teaching beneficial and feasible for oral English classes of junior middle school students?(2) How is situational teaching efficiently applied to promote the oral English learning of junior middle school students?In recent years, some researchers, home and abroad, have studied the effect of the situational teaching in oral English classes. And a growing number of education experts have admitted that as long as the effective teaching situation is created, the students will keep in good condition, furthermore, students will think problems actively in the rich emotional atmosphere with specific images, in order to put into self exploration and cooperation, which is an effective way to improve the oral English ability of junior middle school students. Furthermore, as for the new perspective of this study, based on the mutual development and progress between the teachers and students, it aims to explore how to create lively and particular situations efficiently, in order to inspire students’ emotional experience, and encourage students’ willingness in taking part in class activities thus improve their oral English proficiency.This research selects the students in Grade Eight, Anshan No. 29 Junior Middle School in Tiedong District as the research subjects for a 5-month experiment(from September 2014 to January 2015). And it takes constructivism and the second language acquisition as the theoretical foundation, furthermore, makes a detailed exploration on the application of situational teaching in oral English classes in junior middle school, by means of the quantitative and qualitative analysis. Through the comparison of the experimental class and the control class before and after the experiment, this research analyses the different teaching effects by using situational teaching and traditional teaching. Results from the experiments will confirm that, if the teacher can appropriately take the advantage of situational teaching, it will increase the oral English learning interests of the junior middle school students, and help students to cultivate the positive emotion and attitude, so as to improve their English learning efficiency.