Investigation On Lead-in Activities In English Teaching In Junior Middle Schools In Huanggang

Lead-in is the first and the most basic part in English classroom teaching. Successful lead-in can arouse students’ learning interest, gain students’ attention, make students’ learning stress-free and teaching efficiency improved naturally. So lead-in plays an important role in successful teaching and tasks accomplished.Through the retrieval of the existing research results, the author finds that most domestic researches on English classroom lead-in in junior middle school are sporadic and most of them are based on description and summary, lacking of sufficient theoretical support and systemic.This research is based on the textbook named “Go For It”, published by People’s Education Press and a video of “English teaching skills contest in junior school, Huanggang, Hubei province, in 2014”. In order to investigate the current situation of lead-in used in junior middle schools and teachers’ perception on lead-in, questionnaires and corresponding interview were issued by the author. Through investigation the author finds that teachers’ ideas and views of lead-in are not embodied in their designing of lead-in process. Differences exist between teachers’ concepts of lead-in and the practice of lead-in used in junior middle school English class.According to interview, the author finds that some English teachers in junior middle school, Huanggang, Hubei province, have not realized the great significance of lead-in. Their teaching importance mainly focus on target language points. The interview also shows that the reason for this phenomena is that those teachers are lack of awareness on the function of lead-in in the whole English class teaching and have little knowledge of various lead-in methods. They think it is really hard to operate when they put lead-in techniques into practice and it also has little effect on improving teaching efficiency, so they ignore lead-in process entirely. Therefore, In the second half of this essay, according to the research results, the author summarize some principles and strategies of lead-in, this may provide a reference for teachers when they design lead-in activities.This study is helpful to junior middle school English teacher to realize the significance of lead-in section, understand the function of lead-in, and adopt lead-in into practice to improve teaching efficiency.