The Application Research Of Role-playing Activities In Primary School English Teaching In Lower Grades

In basic education, the current situation of English education is not adapted to requirements of China's economic construction and era development. Aiming at this point, the latest New Curriculum Standards of Primary School English puts forward key points of curriculum reform:1. Change the current situation that English course's excessive emphasizing on vocabulary knowledge explaining and teaching to cultivating practical language application ability.2. Stress that English course should start from students' learning interest, living experience, and cognitive level.3. Propose to combine multiple learning styles like experience, practice, participation, cooperation and exchange in teaching.4. Propose to develop students' listening, speaking, reading, and writing ability through task-based teaching approach, and make language learning process a process for students to form active emotional attitude and thought, practice bravely, improve cross-cultural awareness, and form autonomous learning ability. However, in China's primary school English teaching process, students' interests and practical application ability of English are not optimistic. There are problems like simple teaching methods and backward teaching philosophies. Above problems make students lack interests and subjective initiative on English learning. English classes are inanimate. Therefore, we must change traditional teaching method to some extent and find more effective English teaching method. New Curriculum Standards of Primary School English also puts forward that, elementary students should learn to play roles through learning English. Role play focuses on interaction between teachers and students and exchange between students. This will help to form active class atmosphere, and improve teachers' teaching efficiency. However, in low grade in primary school, role play is not often used. The author tries to use role play in English class in low grade to help teachers' teaching and improve students' comprehensive language using ability. After summarizing previous research and theories about role play, the author boldly comes up with following four assumptions:1. Role play will motivate students' interests and enthusiasm on English learning.2. Role play will form students' autonomous learning ability.3. Role play will increase students' teamwork ability.4. Role play will increase students' English listening, speaking, reading, and writing ability. In this research, the author makes experiment on two parallel classes in Grade 3 in Hujiamiao Town, Chunhua County. The author selects 31 students in Class (1) Grade 3 as the experiment group, and 33 students in Class (2) Grade 3 as control group. In research of role play teaching, experiment group carries out role play activity, and control group is given conventional teaching with same contents. The experiment time is from October 25,2015 to January 8,2016. The research methods mainly include questionnaire method, interviewing method, case analysis method, and experiment antitheses. This paper tests students' English level of two classes, and makes statistical analysis on their scores. This research certifies that, adopting role play in low grade English teaching in primary school will motivate students' interests and enthusiasm on English learning, help students to form independent learning ability, increase students' communication ability, and improve their listening, speaking, reading, and writing ability. However, there are still some problems, such as content selection, activity implementing frequency, time control, discipline maintaining, student grouping, and teaching essence neglecting problem in role play. This paper also comes up with some feasible solving strategies aiming at existing problems. It is hoped by the author that, this research will give some enlightenments for primary school English teachers' teaching, increase students' interests on English class, and improve teachers' teaching efficiency.