Ａ ＳＴＵＤＹ ＯＦ ＥＬＥＭＥＮＴＡＲＹ ＥＮＧＬＩＳＨ ＴＥＡＣＨＩＮＧ

Abstract : On the basis of analyzing the cognitive characteristics of elementary English learners, this article intends to deepen the understanding of junior English teaching, thus provides some guides in the daily teaching so as to facilitate English study. Due to the cultivation of interest plays important role in the process of English study, this paper also illustrated how the interest of elementary English learner is aroused, kept and enhanced. Then the interrelation of “controllable attempt”, “interest” and “occurrence of satisfactory feeling” is discussed. Since in the whole learning process, students requires constant satisfactory feeling(success), how to guide them to have more succeeding experiences should be one important issue that the teachers need to deal with. On the basis of the field study, four suggestions are summarized in the hope to have some help in the elementary English teaching.

Key words: interest, controllable attempt, satisfactory feeling, 4 “L”s

1.1 Introduction

With the development of world economic integration, learning English is becoming more and more popular. People in China pay more attention to English learning. In recent years, even elementary school has started to have English courses. How to make students effectively learn English is the critical issue that thousands of teachers and instructors confront. In fact, in order to develop an effective English teaching method in the English-language education, teachers have been making untiring efforts. Based on the field teaching experience, we focus on a study of the elementary English teaching in hope of finding proper methods and skills to teach the students effectively.

1.2 The cognitive and learning characteristics of Primary English Learners

1.2.1 Curiosity→Interest-Plays an Important Role in Primary Students English Study

When students start to learn English, most of them do not know why they need to learn English, though their parents may stress the importance of learning English to them, yet they can hardly understand it at that age. At this time, curiosity plays the most importance role in entering the gate of English study. Students like new things. How to keep them to have the curiosity for a long time is the thing the teachers should consider. That is to cultivate their interest. “Interest” plays an important role in learning English, as the old proverb says: “Interest is the best teacher”. Therefore teachers should make their efforts to arouse and keep the interest of the Students. This requires teachers to try their best to make their teaching vivid and interesting. How to make the teaching attractive to the students, it does not only require the teaching materials to be interest but also involves the occurrence of satisfactory feeling from the serials of succeeding controllable attempts.

1.2.2 Controllable Attempts→Occurrence of Satisfactory Feeling→Interest Stressed

What does “controllable attempts”, “occurrence of satisfactory feeling” and “interest” mean?

To a student, if a thing is interesting, it must be controllable, that is to say, a child should be able to learn how to control a certain matter without (much) difficulties, this “controllable” factor should be essential to maintain their interests.

Here is an experiment: A human behaviour researcher put a button-switch on a bed which is attached to a light bulb that is also on the bed and both could be easily observed, the switch is very easy for a baby to learn to use. Then he put a baby on the bed, and before it, he operated the switch several times, and then leave it to the baby, he ran away and observed the baby.

The baby then began to imitate the action from the researcher: it put its finger on the button,pushed it down, and the switch is turned on, and the bulb too, and when the baby saw the bulb giving out light, it showed a satisfied impression, and it pushed the button again and pushed again, the bulb was off, it showed a more satisfied face, and then it pushed the button the third time, fourth…

From the experiment shown above, we could see that the baby was happy despite it didnt get any reward of material, so it could be explained that the switch and bulb satisfied its need. That is to say, the instinct to control other things in learning how to control them gives the baby feeling of success.

Babies are the human free from the social bias, therefore this instinct or need possessed by them is the same thing that every person has. In other words, this requirement to control other things remains the same regardless of age, gender, or social rank. Then how to meet the requirements of satisfied feeling should be one problem that teachers confront. The following paragraphs put forward to the constructive suggestion by focusing on the “controllable” attempts.

1.2.3 Four items help teachers to keep lessons full of controllable attempts

Every teacher wants to make his/her teaching success, and a success teaching of primary English is to be designed to make the knowledge “controllable” to students, that is to require teacher to pay some attention to the following items:

A. Properly design the starting level of the teaching contents.

B. Properly upgrade the difficulty of teaching content step by step.

C. Properly arrange the amount of exercise assigned in class.

D. Properly control the rhythm of teaching

A. Properly design the starting level of the teaching contents. This is a determinate factor that decides whether a series of English teaching procedures is successful or not. The cognitive ability of students have the following characteristics:the material which carries visual and vivid information can be accepted quickly, but the abstractive, obscure information normally be accepted slowly. Therefore, visual and vivid material should be laid emphasis in choosing the teaching contents. That is to say, the content for preparation should be simple, clear, close to daily-life so that the students could understand and master them quickly .In this way, the teachers efforts to design “controllable attempts” is achieved.

B. Properly upgrade the difficulty of teaching content step by step: As we know, children are active-minded. But this does not always have positive effect in learning language. As we have discussed in part “A”, their minds are quick but also tend to skipping in thinking because they are not qualified for the strong logical ability. Therefore, the content which involves discursion, deduction normally is one of the difficulties in their English learning process. That explains why teachers should plan to increase the difficulty step by step.In fact, the experienced teachers usually upgrade the difficulty so mildly that the children even can not detect it. This poses a challenge to teachers: how to upgrade the difficulty step by step, so that Ss would just learn the advanced knowledge like learning the modification of the contents, this sort of teaching design requires the teachers to digest the textbook, to know the textbook from the inside to outside, that is, to master the teaching contents fully. Meanwhile they need to understand students very well so that they can know their thoughts, and their psychology of learning. Only when teachers have good knowledge of both teaching contents and their teaching objects, they can guide the students to learn advanced knowledge without feeling the upgrading of difficulty. Then, they could be happily notice that the students make constant progress without feeling difficulty. In this way, their teaching aim is easily obtained.

C. Properly arrange the amount of exercise assigned in class: Children are more capable in learning new things as we have stated previously. This ability is far from adults imagination and which can not be imitated by adults. But children memory is like their ability of learning new things. They can easily learning simple and vivid things but feel hard in learning complicated or abstractive things. Since the complicated or abstractive content is evitable in the process of language teaching.How to simplify these content pose another challenge to the teachers.

Exercises are always attached to teaching, it is an important part in teaching process. Proper amount of exercise are very essential in English teaching. In fact, experienced teachers can properly assign some exercise to the students when they initiate the complicated or abstractive content. Because certain amount of exercise can simplify the complicated or abstractive content. By providing students withproper amount of exercise, the teachers are intending to make the students know how to use the complicated or abstractive teaching content. In this way, the abstractive language information gives visible or touchable form to the students which are more easily to remember because these forms are more vivid and lively to them.Thus students are more active in learning the new complicated language point since the satisfied feeling from the controllable attempt is arisen. Teaching target is also easily reached.

D. Properly control the rhythm of teaching: Besides the above mentioned three factors, teachers should also do well in the respect of rhythm in teaching. As we have discussed before, students are very curious to the new things but their curiosity isnt durable, it keeps normally a very short time. This requires teachers to keep the teaching rhythm to be quick which makes the students feel delight but not dull in learning new knowledge. Here “quick” never means “strain” which might become one motive for adults to do things better but will not do well for children because children easily lose interest in doing things. To be quick in rhythm indicates the teaching circumstance should be enjoyable to the students . Students learn things without straining their nerves too much. As the main purpose in primary English teaching is to arouse and keep the interests of the learners, teachers should arrange their teaching with proper rhythm and enhance their interests of learning.

1.3 Conclusion ( Second 4, 4 “L”s )

Based on the above discuss, the “four “ constructive suggestion could be summarized as the following 4 sentences:

A. Starting level of the contents is LOW: so that every student could have a vivid beginning of knowledge;

B. Increasing the difficulty in each step which should be LITTLE: so that every student could learn new knowledge without noticing the difficulties;

C. Assigning exercise amount is LARGE: so that every student could have the adequate chances to practice.

D. Rhythm in teaching is LIGHT: so that every student could keep a pleasant mood in the steps of learning.

In this article, Ive expressed my views and my ideas on how to improve Primary English teaching quality.

I listed the ways to keep and enhance the students interest in primary English teaching. By focusing on the “Controllable attempt”, four constructive suggests are put forward to.

Besides the factors discussed in this article, there might existed other factors related with these two subjects which might have effects on the teaching quality simultaneously. So these views and ideas might not be mature but I hope my research can throw some light on the progress of English teaching.

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