The Analysis of English Teaching Methods

ZHANG Ping

（Sanquan Medical College,Xinxiang Medical University,Xinxiang Henan 453000）

0 Introduction

Reading is a basis for English learning;the learners can not have excellent skills to listening,writing and speaking without good reading ability.Reading is also one of the most important ways for people to get information,to obtain knowledge,to take pleasure and to communicate.Reading comprehension in china has been placed in an important position;teachers draw their attentions to the instruction of reading ways and the practice of reading skills in order to increase the students’reading ability. However, the situation of students’ reading comprehension isn’t satisfactory.It has been observed that many students have difficulty in reading articles,while reading is still important in university entrance exam.Most teachers have attributed their students’poor reading comprehension to linguistic deficiencies.Consequently,students are encouraged to expand their vocabularies and to gain greater control over complex syntactic structures so as to improve reading comprehension.However,the result is not satisfactory.Many students spend a lot of time remembering vocabulary and grammar,but their reading ability is still poor.Some students even become afraid of English and lose their interest in learning English.

1 Methods adopted in my own teaching

Through my career of teaching senior middle school,I have got a general impression on reading activities in the reading classes in my school，that is,they are monotonous,unmotivating and not task-based.The class is teacher-centered，almost all the teachers used the same approach to teach texts.The reading part of each unit is mainly divided into two parts,and two different methods are adopted separately in the two parts.

1.1 Question-and-answer method

In the first part,teachers adopt Question-and-answer method;they begin class with several simple questions,and then give students several minutes to read the text,and then ask students questions about the text again.This part takes one class to finish.This Question-and-answer method only has a history of several years in my school.Teachers apply this method in order to change the teacher-centerness,to stress students’principal roles and to embody the communicative thought of foreign language teaching,they use this to replace the simple form of instruction.By employing the integrating methods ofquestioning,answering,facilitating and directing,instructional information is passed in double way instead of in one way,that is,the teacher's merely instruction is changed into the communication between the teacher and the students.Thus,students’chances to participate classroom activities increase.

However,according to my observation,this method has many shortcomings.Firstly,it is difficult to assure the degrees of questioning.Most students have at least one reference book,in which there are Chinese translation of reading texts and keys to post-reading questions and workbook.It is hard to know whether students really comprehend the text.Secondly,there are too many controlled activities.Students are busy answering questions,so they lack time and space of thinking by themselves.During the several minutes that teachers give students to read,some students are busy looking up their reference book to look for answers in order to handle teachers’questions.Thirdly,most of the questions belong to Yes-or-No questions.Such low-level language practice makes students’cognition and understanding to the text remain at the superficial level.Finally,in the limited time of one class,the activities can only be carried out in the range of several students whereas most of the students are in the state of passive reception,so it is lack of the contents to direct students to do activities for integrating thinking.Thus,it cannot provide a good process for most students to accumulate practical language experience and to develop the language level.

1.2 Grammar-Translation method

In the second part of teaching,many teachers adopt the traditional grammar-translation teaching method.This part takes about three classes to finish.During the learning process,the teacher acts as a dominator and the students are only like receptacles.The focus of teaching is on language form and the class is teacher-centered.Some reading classes seem like classes of vocabulary and grammar.The students just listen to the teacher passively,and are busy making notes of so-called important words,phrases and examples,underlining the language points of the text and write down the Chinese version.The students have little chance to practice using English to communicate with others in this part.As the oldest teaching method,the grammar-translation method has had a strong influence on English teachers and they still refer to it.Its vitality lies in:it emphasizes on training students’language knowledge by instructing grammar.

However,it has obvious disadvantages:firstly,the teacher dominates the class by talking all the time while students are only passive listeners.That leads to a situation where students depend too much on the teacher and lack a sense of responsibility for their own learning.Secondly,little time is spared for the students to practice English;students don’t have chances to practice and improve their communicative ability in language.A lack of opportunity to practice can cause students’low learning ability.As a result,the students lack communicative competence and integrating abilities of using the English language.Thirdly,once a student is called to answer teacher’s question,he or she tends to get nervous and doesn’t know what to say.The result that most students have poor reading abilities has proved that this method is not ideal to improve the students’English reading skills.

2 Task-based Language Teaching

In order to change the present situation,teachers should change their traditional way of teaching.As we know adolescents always need something new to stir them up and arouse their curiosity.So as teachers，we should provide them with various activities to keep their interest in reading.In light of my present view on English language teaching,the students’needs,the present teaching conditions,Task-based Language Teaching（TBLT）is a good way to be used in the reading classroom.

TBLT concentrates more on carrying out tasks than on grade structures and vocabulary.According to Nunan’s definition,a task is “a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending,manipulating,producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form.The task should also have a sense of completeness,being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right”.Crookes defines a task as “a piece of work or an activity,usually with a specified objective,undertaken as part of an educational course,at work,or used to elicit data for research.” For Prabhu,a task is “an activity which requires learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought,and which allows teachers to control and regulate that process”.The primary focus of classroom activity is the task and language is the instrument which the students use to complete it.The activity reflects real life and learners focus on meaning;they are free to use any language they want.Playing a game，solving a Problem or sharing information or experience，can all be considered as relevant and authentic tasks.

TBLT advocates that the tasks of language learning are activities in which students work purposefully towards an objective or the communicative process in getting to concrete objective.It creates a need to learn and use language,and creates an opportunity for language acquisition.The new English curriculum standard highly advocates the use of TBLT,in which teachers involve the students’active participation in the task performance so as to help them to learning by doing things such as thinking,discussing,cooperating,communicating and etc.TBLT emphasizes on the ability to communicate through interaction in the target language and the students’ability to solve tasks or problems related to their real world.Therefore,TBLT is an effective language teaching approach to improve students’reading comprehension ability.

3 The advantages of Task-based Language Teaching

Compared with traditional teaching methods,TBLT has some advantages.First,TBLT provides students with a problem to solve or a task to complete.The teacher will devise tasks that require students to complete,do role play,fill in charts or grids,give their personal opinions,and generally engage in more oral work.It attempts to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom.It can change the present teaching situation where much attention is paid to language knowledge and teaching style is instructional,while language practice is not enough.Second,group work helps students improve their language skills.Every student in the class has opportunities to take part in activities,which change the traditional situation that only several active students get the opportunities to communicate with teachers while most of the students just keep silence during reading class.And also students will be motivated by the fact they are going to be involved in pair and group work;they will put more efforts if they know their work is to be scrutinized in group.In order to solve the problems in class,they must cooperate with each other,help each other and even depend on each other.By doing these teaching activities,they are sure to understand the importance of cooperation and the spirit of team work.Third,TBLT helps students become more independent in learning.Reading-teaching,in a traditional way,is a teacher-dominated instruction,now it becomes group activities with task-based instruction.The students are the center.It is the students who carry out the tasks.Teachers only act as organizers,controllers,and helpers.Fourth,TBLT helps create a democratic,relaxing,and harmonious class atmosphere,which helps build students’confidence,enthusiasm and interest in learning English.We all know that psychological factors influence students’learning.TBLT offers students a non-threatening classroom atmosphere.They get much meaningful language input and have access to what they learn in the classroom to solve problems in real life.A relaxing environment can not only benefit enhancing the students’interest and their participation,but also benefit developing students’creating sense.Students will have confidence to interact in the target language if they are in an amiable and relaxing atmosphere.

4 Conclusion

As a new teaching approach,TBLT is beneficial to cultivate the students’ independent study ability;it cultivates students’ cooperative spirit to get with others and sense of participation;it can stimulate students’interest and evokes their enthusiasm in learning,and motivates students to be active participants in the learning process,and hence lead to their reading performance improvement.Therefore,With the reform and development in compulsory education,I think TBLT will be adopted by more teachers in senior English reading classes.

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