A Study On Interactive Strategies For Junior High School EFL Teaching Based On Teachers’ Interactive Ability

In the current practice of junior high school EFL teaching,there still exist some problems in the interaction between teachers and students,such as one-way,simple,difficult,ineffective,and shallow interaction,resulted from the teachers’ inadequate interactive ability manifested as the lack of effective interactive strategies.Meanwhile,in the existing study of junior high school EFL teaching,there are not adequate studies on teacher-student interaction,especially strategies for interaction based on teachers’ interactive ability,resulted mainly from a lack of emphasis on teachers’ interactive ability and related communicative competencies.Oriented to the above problems in the practice and research of junior high school EFL teaching,the present study intends to develop and verify a set of strategies for teacher-student interaction in junior high school EFL teaching based on the teachers’ interactive ability which may enhance not only the students’ learning motivation but also their English proficiency and thinking ability,in the light of social cognition theory,cooperative learning theory,constructivist theory and communicative language teaching theory,through the methods of quasi-experiment,classroom observation,questionnaire survey,and testing,involving 90 junior high school students in two classes of a certain high school in China and their English teachers as participants.In particular,this study first proposes a set of interactive strategies based on teachers’ interactive ability for junior high school EFL teaching,which includes strategies for enhancing the teachers’ interactive and communicative ability,strategies for raising the students’ interactive and communicative ability,strategies for selecting the content or topics of interaction,strategies for improving the methods of interaction,and strategies for making use of information technology in interaction.This study then verifies the proposed interactive strategies in terms of the following two research questions:(1)Can the interactive strategies for junior high school EFL teaching enhance the students’ motivation in EFL learning(as reflected in the classroom atmosphere,hand-raising,attention,and initiative)?(2)Can the interactive strategies for junior high school EFL teaching improve the students’ EFL proficiency and thinking ability? Results generated from the study shows the following:(1)The interactive strategies for junior high school EFL teaching can effectively increase the students’ motivation in EFL learning(as reflected in the classroom atmosphere,hand-raising,attention,and initiative).(2)The interactive strategies for junior high school EFL teaching can effectively enhance the students’ EFL proficiency and thinking ability.This study may have both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it may help to compensate for the inadequate study of teacher-student interaction in junior high school EFL teaching.Practically,it may contribute to the development of strategies for teacher-student interaction in junior high school EFL teaching.