| English is a foreign language.Its learning process is a complex and dynamic process made up of psychological cognition,creative thinking and social interaction.The goal of language learning is to achieve effective communication in real life.And classroom activities are the main channel to develop students’ English learning,so the design of classroom activities directly affects the the quality of teaching and the development of students.The current middle school English classroom activities are designed mainly to teach some language knowledge and skills.English teaching activities are generally regarded as purposeful activities of transferring literary language knowledge.In Habermas’ s "theory of communicative action",communication is a kind of inter-subjective action by using the language as a medium.The theory advocates the rationalization of communicative action and emphasizes the equality of natural dialogue between subjects.Under the new situation,teachers should understand that the purpose of English learning is to cultivate and improve the students’ learning ability.The purposeful activity is not an ideal way in English teaching.We,as middle school English teachers,should try to explore a new way of English teaching aiming to turn the purposeful activities in class into communicative activities.This article uses the literature method,theoretical research method and classroom observation method to study and think about the German philosopher Habermas’ s theory of communicative action and the enlightenment it brings English teachers in designing classroom activities.Based on this theory,this paper examines the present situation of junior middle school English classroom teaching activities.The writer also organizes some teaching resources that can be applied to classroom activities.And according to different course types in junior high school English textbooks,some proper classroom activities are listed for reference.This paper is divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction.It introduces the origin of the topic,the significance of the research for the communicative action theory and the design of classroom activities related researches from home and abroad including the research methods used in this paper.The second part is a brief overview of Habermas and his theory,including Habermas’ s life,works and the theory of communicative action.The third part analyzes the present situation of English classroom activities in middle school and the change of communicative behavior in classroom activities.The fourth part is the design of some feasible English classroom activities.The fifth part is the summary of this paper. |
