A Case Study Of The Use Of Picture Books In Teaching English To 4th Graders

In recent 5 years,with punchy texts and delicate pictures,English picture books have been increasingly attracting attention in China's English language teaching academia.In particular,Chengdu “Everyone Reads English Picture Books” Activities were held in 2017,which indicates that nationwide reading has been advocated among primary school children through reading and acting out English picture books.Generally speaking,English picture books are greatly to school children's appetite and perfectly fit into the demands of English Curriculum Standards(2011).Thus,the author was inspired to put English picture books into teaching practice and investigation.In this article,hence,qualitative as well as quantitative research methods and procedures are employed to explore the use and effectiveness of picture books in teaching English to the fourth graders.93 students of Grade Four,aged from 9 to 10 years old,from Shawanlu Primary School Jinniu District Chengdu City,as well as the author,are involved in this investigation process for about 5 months.What should be mentioned is that all the public primary schools in Jinniu District adopt English Book(Starting from Grade One,Peking Normal University Edition)as their official textbook.In the teaching practice,the researcher chooses picture books relevant with the unit topics of the textbook as supplementary teaching materials,to lead in the topic of each unit or to work as extensive reading materials or to help reinforce the students' understanding of the topic-based words in each unit.For the research,qualitative data is collected in the form of semi-structured interviews,while quantitative data comes from questionnaires and dictation test results.This triangulation helps ensure the reliability and validity of the research.Among the research methods,questionnaires are designed to learn about the students' attitudes towards and preferences for both picture books and the picture book instruction;to have a deeper understanding of the students' beliefs on picture books,semi-structure interviews are conducted following the questionnaires;and dictation tests are employed to examine the students' mastery of the new topic-based vocabulary.Besides,in the research process,the selection of picture books and the instruction of picture books are covered.The author selects picture books for fourth graders based on six principles,including the “i+1” pattern,the fourth graders' interest,culture-relatedness,aesthetic ability,educational values and topic base.For another,picture book teaching includes six main steps,they are reading cover page;picture walk;reading aloud;mind mapping;retelling;post-reading activities(say role play and picture book making).The research results show that: first,teaching English with picture books can help stimulate and enhance the fourth-grade students' interest and confidence in learning English;second,with content-related texts and pictures,English picture books can help reduce reading difficulty to some extend and thus are helpful in cultivating the learners' reading habits;third,using English picture books may assist students in consolidating their mastery of the topic-based vocabulary in the textbook.Based on the research procedures and results,the research may be of valuable reference to peer teachers in the following aspects.First,it may inspire other peer teachers to try picture book teaching with their primary school students.Second,it may give peer teachers ideas on what criteria to choose suitable picture books for the students.Third,it provides a systematical procedure of picture book instruction along with some practical ways of teaching English picture books,especially SRE strategy and STW strategy.Fourth,it reminds the teachers not to ignore various intelligence and talents of different kids,in order to better help them learn English.