A Case Study Of A Revision Class By An Excellent Junior English Teacher

This study was undertaken to probe into a revision class given by an excellent junior English teacher.The theoretical bases in this study are System Theory and Constructivism.The significance of this study lies in three aspects:finding out how the excellent teacher made the revision class effective;helping to enrich the existing revision strategies;and providing reference for future revision class teaching.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1.How did the teacher make preparations before the revision class?2.What teaching strategies did the teacher employ in the revision class?3.How did the teacher make re:flections after the revision class?The subjects in this study were an excellent junior English teacher and a revision class offered by the teacher.The teacher was selected for her abundant teaching experience and advanced educational concept.The instruments employed in the study were an observation scheme and an interview schedule.Data collection involved observation and interview.Observation was made in class.The interview was conducted in Chinese in the teacher’s office after class.With the interviewee’s permission,the interview was recorded and then transcribed and translated.Data analysis involved coding,categorization and summarization.The major findings yielded from the study are summarized as follows:First,before the revision class,sufficient preparations were made by the teacher including analyzing review content,setting review objectives and making review plan.The review content was analyzed in terms of the celebrations of different festivals and the wh-questions.Based on the analysis,the teacher set three objectives from three aspects:to master important words,useful sentences and wh-questions(knowledge and skill objectives);to flexibly apply words,sentences and wh-questions to form passages about festivals of their own(process and method objectives);and to develop interests in different festivals which can help improve their review efficiency(emotion-attitude-value objectives).Then she made the plan by reviewing from words to sentences;from sentences to text respectively.Second,in the revision class,the strategies employed by the teacher were:word review by radiation,key sentence review by connecting the words,text review by integrating grammar with key sentences,consolidation and expansion by test-oriented exercises.In each strategy,the teacher paid attention to the cultivation of students’ interests as well as their learning autonomy,the systematicness of review content and the relevance to tests.Third,after the revision class,the teacher made an all round reflection on the advantages and disadvantages of the revision class.In terms of its advantages,she used word domino to raise students’ learning interests,used mind maps to construct students’ knowledge system and used peer exercise correction to cultivate students’ learning autonomy.In terms of its disadvantage,she did not care for the performance of each student in the class.This study has three limitations:First,the teacher regarded the reading part and the grammar part as the most important in this unit and she focused on the two parts in her teaching.However,the review of other parts like study skills and integrated skills was not covered.As a result of this,some strategies yielded from this study may not be generalized to the review of other parts in a unit.Second,the categorization of the review strategies was all made by the researcher herself,which might not avoid 100%subjectivity.Third,the researcher didn’t record the revision class,which led to inconvenience of latter transcription of the whole class.