A Survey Study On The Use Of Interactive Teaching Activities In English Vocabulary Class Of Early Grades

The quality of classroom teaching is always a great concern to many teachers and researchers.Effective classroom teaching is closely related to high quality classroom interaction.Under the call of the new basic round education reform,the subject position of students in English teaching is valued gradually.To promote the development of students' comprehensive language ability has become the overall goal of English teaching.The traditional teaching method has been taken placed by interactive teaching gradually.Thus,an investigation of interactive teaching activities used in EFL class has the significance in understanding better the implementation of interactive teaching in basic educational English class.This study is conducted to know about the present situation of use of interactive teaching activities in English vocabulary class of early grades.Based on classroom observation,it intends to investigate what kinds of interactive teaching activities are used by teachers and how are they carried out in English vocabulary class of early grades to benefit vocabulary teaching and the degree of satisfaction of students towards the use of these interactive activities by their teacher are also explored.Pedagogical implications are obtained based on major findings of study.The theoretical bases of this study are humanism and constructivism.Second language acquisition theories such as Comprehensive Input Hypothesis,Output Hypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis and interactive language teaching approaches also provide foundations for the study.Relevant studies on vocabulary teaching inspire the study,too.The research questions are to be addressed in this study as follows:1.What interactive teaching activities are used by teachers in English vocabulary class of early grades?2.How are these interactive teaching activities carried out in English vocabulary class of early grades?3.What is the degree of satisfaction of students towards the use of interactive teaching activities by their teacher?What are the most popular and acceptable ones?Three methods are included for the study:classroom observation,interview and questionnaire.Interactive teaching activities used by teacher in English vocabulary class of early grades are investigated based on classroom observation and analysis of the data transcribed from the recorded eight vocabulary classes,together with the results of interview and questionnaire.The degree of satisfaction of students towards the use of interactive teaching activities by teachers is revealed based on data and results collected from questionnaire and interview for students.Two parallel classes were chosen from grade one and grade two separately in a primary school in Nanjing as research subjects.Data collection and analysis includes five steps:firstly,video recorder is used to record the eight vocabulary classes during the listening.Notes are also taken during classroom observation.Secondly,questionnaire papers are distributed to students to fill out.Thirdly,teachers and students are interviewed.Fourthly,the video-recordings are transcribed into texts.Fifthly,Microsoft Excel is used to analyze the data obtained from both the transcribed texts and notes taken.Data collected from questionnaire and interview for students is also analyzed by Microsoft Excel.Major findings of the study are yielded based on the results of the above analysis.The major findings are as follows:1)In English vocabulary class of early grades,interactive teaching activities used by teachers include the use of teachers' interactive discourse,the use of teachers' interactive nonverbal behaviors,the use of interactive vocabulary practice activities used and the use of interactive teaching aids.2)The study found that teachers'interactive discourse and nonverbal behaviors are used the most often in the vocabulary presentation stage when teachers put forward questions to evoke students' thinking,give instant feedback to their answers and explain the meanings,pronunciations and spellings of new vocabularies.As to questioning in teachers' interactive discourse,two types of questions generally asked by teachers are display questions and referential questions.Different questioning strategies such as rephrasing,simplification,repetition and probing strategy are employed to make questions more understandable to students so as to evoke their output of more vocabularies.As to feedback given by teachers,teachers prefer to give positive praise such as simple praise,confirming repetition and praise with awards to build up students' confidence of vocabulary learning.On error treatments,pointing out the correct forms by teachers directly or asking other students to answer are two main solutions to treat vocabulary errors made by students.Besides,a large number of expressive interactive nonverbal behaviors are frequently used by teachers in the vocabulary presentation stage to explain the meanings of new vocabularies.Such nonverbal behaviors include facial expressions,eye behaviors and body movements,of which smiles,finger gestures and eye contacts are teachers' first choices.In the stage of vocabulary practice,many interactive activities are carried out including games,songs,dance and role-plays to help students consolidate the new vocabularies.Games also conclude diversified sub-types,for example,"I say,you do","little train" and so on.Additionally,audio and visual interactive teaching aids are used by teachers to interact with students and include the following types:the multimedia,word cards,photos,blackboard stickers,models and real objects.3)In English vocabulary class of early grades,students are basically satisfied with the use of interactive teaching activities by their teacher.They prefer teachers to use rich interactive discourse and expressive nonverbal behaviors to teach them meanings,pronunciations and spellings of new vocabularies.Interactive nonverbal behaviors such as smiles,eye contacts and gestures are the most popular and acceptable among students.The use of diversified interactive vocabulary practice activities and teaching aids can also stimulate students' interests in learning vocabulary,which are popular among students.However,there still exists space for improvement.On teachers' interactive discourse,students expect more referential questions from their teacher and hope their teacher to use more probing and chaining questioning strategy to evoke their output of more vocabularies.Also,students expect more positive praise with comments or awards from their teacher.They also expect their teacher to guide them to self-revise instead of asking other students to answer,which would increase their activeness and confidence to learn new vocabularies.Also,more diversified and innovative vocabulary practice activities are students'expectations.Instant evaluation of students' performance in each activity by teachers is also expected by students so that their participation can be rewarded.Also,students expect their teacher to avoid excessive dependence on the use of the multimedia to interact with them.However,the study has its limitations.Firstly,the study investigates only four early grades classes in the same primary school and observes only eight English vocabulary classes.Due to the limited sample size,the present study may not represent the overall situation of the use of interactive teaching activities in English vocabulary class of early grades.Secondly,except vocabulary,the same methods can be applied to other English classes,for example,reading,listening and so on so that we can get a broader view of English teaching in China.