Observation Study Of Lead-in Activities Of High-quality Classes In Junior High Schools

Although the lead-in activities account for only a few minutes,they are of great value to the whole English classroom teaching process.Effective and successful lead-in activities can create the atmosphere which is conducive to put students' wholehearted devotion to the English learning,arouse students' curiosity for knowledge,activate students' original knowledge reserves,and establish the connection between students' prior knowledge and new knowledge as well as attract students' attention at the beginning of the class,which improves teaching efficiency and achieves teaching objectives.However,in the actual teaching,there are many problems in the lead-in activities of the English classroom,giving rise to an unsatisfactory effect.Therefore,the author adopts the classroom observation and script analysis to study the lead-in activities of high–quality English teachers in junior high school,explores their teaching characteristics and helps the normal class teachers to improve their designs of the lead-in activities.This research chooses the course videos of thirty English teachers who participated in the Eleventh National Junior High School English Teaching Demonstration Classes in Qingdao in 2015 as the research object,adopts the classroom observation as the main research method,takes the script analysis as the supplementary means,and takes teachers' teaching and students' learning as the main perspective of observation.What's more,the author takes the existence of lead-in activities in high–quality English class in junior high school,ways and functions of lead-in activities,characteristics of teachers' discourse in lead-in activities,students' participation,and duration of lead-in activities as the main observation points.The author compiles the Observation Table of Lead-in Activities of High–quality English Class in Junior High Schools,in order to record the actual situation of high–quality English class teaching in junior high school,and uses some statistical tables to deal with the relevant data of the lead-in activities,aiming to understand the teaching situation of the high-quality English teachers in junior high school.Based on Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory,Gagne's Information-processing Theory and Ausubel's Meaningful Learning Theory,the author summarizes the characteristics oflead-in activities of high–quality English class in junior high schools,analyzes their advantages,and provides advice on the design of lead-in activities in normal classes for English teachers in junior high schools.The conclusions of the research are as follows.Firstly,high-quality English teachers in junior high schools attach importance to the lead-in activities.Secondly,ways of the lead-in activities are flexible and diverse.Thirdly,lead-in activities are multi-functional.Besides,teachers' discourse characteristics are obvious.What's more,students' participation is active in lead-in activities.And the duration of lead-in activities is proper.In view of the above conclusions,this paper suggests that English teachers of normal classes in junior high schools should guarantee lead-in activities in their classes.They also should study the teaching objectives and content carefully,and select the targeted method of lead-in activities.Besides,teachers should make their lead-in activities give full play to different functions.And they should pay attention to strengthen their own faculty of teaching language in lead-in activities.What's more,teachers are supposed to enhance the breadth of students' participation and students' positive attitude in lead-in activities.And teachers should make sure that the duration of lead-in activities is proper.