A Comparative Study Of Primary School English Novice And Skilled Teachers' Behavioral Strategies To Deal With Students' Classroom Problems

Students’classroom problem behavioral problems have been regarded as one of the biggest challenges for primary and secondary school teachers.Classroom management skills have thus been one of the important factors for the success of classroom teaching.It is the case for English classrooms too.The current study focuses on the primary English classrooms and serves two purposes.One is to find out,under the current 21~stt century,the students’behavioral problems in primary English classes.The other one is to make a comparative study on the strategies of new English teachers and experienced teachers in dealing with students’behavioral problems in terms of their similarities and differences.Three research methods are used to collect data:classroom observation,questionnaire and interview.Quantitative and qualitative methods are both used to analyze the data.The study found that there are mainly ten types of students problematic behaviors in primary school Englishclasses,includingabsent-mindedness,non-participation,talk,hyperactivity,non-cooperation,non-follow-up,obstructing others,laughing at others,disobedience and losing temper.And except for disobedience and losing temper,the other eight types occur often.The analysis of the data shows that for each problematic behavior,novice English teachers and experienced English teachers have different strategies in dealing with them.In response to the absent-mindedness,the novice English teacher mainly adopts the strategy of reminding,and the experienced English teachers use three types of strategies:reminding,changing the teaching methods and a combination of reminding and changing teaching methods.In response to the non-participation,the novice English teacher adopts a strategy of reminding or changing the teaching methods,whereas four main kinds of strategies are adopted by the experienced English teacher which are reminding,changing the teaching methods,communicating and a combination of reminding,changing the teaching methods and communicating.In response to the problem of talk,the novice English teacher mainly adopts a reminding strategy,whereas the experienced English teacher adopts reminding,changing teaching methods or a combination of changing teaching methods and student self-management,totally three types.For the problem behavior of hyperactivity,the novice teachers adopt two kinds of strategies.One is reminding and another is a combination of reminding and punishing.And the experienced English teachers use three types strategies:reminding,changing the teaching methods and a combination of reminding,changing teaching methods and communicating.For non-cooperation,novice teachers adopt the strategies of reminding.And experienced teachers adopt three types of strategies:reminding,a combination of reminding and changing teaching methods and a combination of reminding,changing teaching methods and communicating.As for non-follow-up,the novice teachers adopts the punishment strategy,and the experienced teachers mainly adopt two kinds of strategies:the strategies of changing the teaching methods and a combination of changing teaching methods and communicating.For obstructing others,the strategies of a combination of punishment and persuasion education are the two main methods preferred by the novice English teachers,whereas the experienced teacher adopts the strategies of a combination of reminding and persuasion education.For the problem of laughing at others,the novice teacher simply take punishment strategy,whereas the experienced teachers mainly use two strategies.One is punishment strategy and another is a combination of punishing and persuasion education.In response to the disobedience problem,the measures taken by the novice teachers are punishment or persuasion education.The experienced teachers adopt the strategy of a combination of communicating and persuasion education.For the problematic behavior of losing temper,the novice teachers adopt the strategy of a combination of punishment,communicating and persuasion education,whereas the experienced teachers mainly adopt the strategy of a combination of communicating and persuasion education.In view of the above researching finding,the author tentatively put forward four suggestions to English teachers when dealing with students’classroom problematic behaviors.Firstly,the English teachers should pay special attention to the communicative skills with students.Secondly,English teachers need to choose suitable strategies according to kinds of factors;Thirdly,English teachers should help to cultivate students’self-control ability.Finally,in order to help the childown establish a good behavior habit,the cooperation of parents and schools must be strengthen.