An Investigation On Lead-in Ways In Senior High School English Classes

Up to now,class is still the main study place for students,especially for those who have not entered the university yet.Well begun is half done,as the foremost part,lead-in aims at improving learning efficiency through attracting students' attention,arousing their interest,stimulating their motivation,initiative and enthusiasm to study.The final destination for lead-in part is to cultivate students to make a good preparation before accepting the new knowledge.The new curriculum standards emphasize the important role of class activities which can arouse students' interest and motivation and make a good foundation for the whole class.At the same time,students should cultivate students'intercultural awareness to adapt to the development of globalization.The activities teachers design should be based on students' interest and experience from daily life.However,in the real class,a large number of lead-in problems come up.First,teachers do not pay enough attention.Because of the test pressure,teachers always get straight to the point and put almost all the time to interpret the language knowledge,which do not realize the importance of concentration and learning interest.Second,with the limitation of time,teachers use the same lead-in ways,the same lead-in contents to the different class,as a result,the effect is not as we expect.What is more,some lead-in activities do not base on the experience and interest of the students,which results in the low participation of class.This study bases on the theories of meaningful learning of Ausubel and cognitive learning of Piaget,probe into the different lead-in ways of different types of class by researching senior high school students of grade one.Based on research objectives,two research questions are put forward:(1)What lead-in ways do teachers often adopted in Grade One of Senior High School EFL classes?(2)Which are popular lead-in ways in Grade One EFL classes of Senior High School?On these two questions,this research chooses some students and teachers that are from No.1 Middle School in Zhangpu of Fujian province,as its research objects.Three main research methods are used in this study:classroom observation,research questionnaires and interviews.The investigation shows that the frequency of teachers' using lead-in ways from high to low are Multi-media lead-in,Questions lead-in,Pictures lead-in,Revision lead-in,Free-talk lead-in and Background Knowledge lead-in.And among these ways,students prefer to Multi-media lead-in,Situation lead-in,Playing games lead-in,Pictures lead-in,Questions lead-in and Story,fable,old sayings lead-in in turn.The thesis consists of seven chapters.Chapter One is the introduction of the present research.It includes the three parts below:the research background,the research objectives,and the overall structure.Chapter Two is the literature review.It illustrates the definition of lead-in,the functions of lead-in,the principles of lead-in and ways of lead-in,the studies on lead-in at abroad and home and brings in the theoretical basis on lead-in as well.Chapter Three is research design,which contains four parts here:research questions,research subjects,research methods and data collection.Chapter Four presents the research results.This chapter mainly analyses the results from the classroom observation,and discusses the questionnaires and the interview respectively.Chapter Five first makes a summary of the major findings of this study.This chapter explores the necessity and importance of lesson types.Chapter six offers English teachers some lesson analysis and pedagogical suggestions.Chapter seven points out the study limitations and discusses the further research prospects in this area.