Action Research On Strategies Of Cultivating English Learning Interests In Secondary Vocational School

The dense interest can stimulate students' thirst for knowledge.It is essential to cultivate students' interest in learning English in secondary vocational school.Though there are sufficient researches on learning interest both at home and abroad,most of them investigate the relationship between learning interest and academic achievement,and teaching strategies to stimulate students' interest in learning English and so on.Few of them adopt action research to explore effective teaching strategies to cultivate students' interest in learning English in secondary vocational school.The present action research firstly investigates reasons why students in secondary vocational school show no interest in learning English,and then explore what teaching strategies may effectively cultivate students' interest in learning English,and how the teaching strategies are applied effectively.The present study,with Reinforcement Theory of Motivation,Attribution Theory,Achievement Motivation Theory and Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis as theoretical bases,attempts to answer two research questions:(1)What may be the effective teaching strategies to cultivate students' interests in English learning in secondary vocational school?(2)How are the teaching strategies applied effectively to maintain students' interest in English learning in secondary vocational school?An 18-week action research was conducted,whose subjects are 56 students in Senior One majoring in Human Resources Management of Zhongshan Technical School.During two cycles of action research,six teaching strategies are implemented.The research instruments include classroom observations,interviews and questionnaire.Based on the analysis of the collected data,the action research gets the following findings.1)Implementing playing games teaching strategy,classroom situational teaching strategy,teaching material choosing strategy,incentive teaching strategy or teaching evaluation strategy in class could effectively cultivate students' interest in learning English.2)In class,organizing students to play competition games,conducting role-playactivity or organizing students to learn in groups could effectively implement above teaching strategies and stimulate and maintain students' interest in learning English.The timely encouragement,praise,affirmation and reward of teacher also could effectively maintain students' interest in learning English.In addition,reducing difficulty of the teaching contents,encouraging students to choose what to learn by themselves and adopting comprehensive evaluation methods are also helpful in maintaining students' interest in learning English.The present study shed light on English teaching in secondary vocational school.First,teachers should apply proper teaching strategies into English teaching.Second,no matter which teaching strategy or method is applied in teaching,it aims to cultivate students' interest in learning English.Third,it is helpful for students to cultivate interest through playing games,situational learning,incentive,teaching material choosing or comprehensive evaluation.