Contents
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Significance of the Method
1.2 General Organization of the Thesis
Chapter Two Current Situation of Middle school English Class
Chapter Three Literature review of the Situational Teaching Method
3.1 Definition of the Situational Method
3.2 The Features of Situational Teaching Method
Chapter Four Application of the Situational Teaching Method
4.1 Concrete Ways of Applying the Method
4.1.1 Organizing interesting activities in the classroom
4.1.2 Applying multimedia to English teaching
4.1.3 Creating atmosphere for English learning in the class
4.2 Findings and Effect
4.2.1 The situational teaching method is benificial to create a favorable language
environment
4.2.2 the situational teaching method can shorten the psychological distance between
teacher and students
Chapter Five Conclusion
Bibliography
Abstract
Nowadays, English, as an international language, has been one of the most important courses in middle school, so middle school English teaching has widely be focused by even more people. The students in middle Schools are eager to learn, but lack of patience; they are eager to show themselves, but sometimes lack of courage. They want to attract by the others, they want the teachers’ praise. So the teaching method which can match the pupil’s characteristic, and make them accept easily, also can increase their interest and learning efficiency is the topic that many English teachers are researching about. As a matter of fact, the current situation of English teaching in middle school is that English teachers still use the traditional methods, which can not arouse the students’ interests. In order to change the situation, many teachers are researching new teaching method, of which the situational teaching method is regarded as the suitable method in middle school English teaching according to the characteristics of middle school students. The aim of this paper is to show situational teaching method is appropriate for middle school English classes and it can improve classroom atmosphere and arouse students’ interest. By designing some real situations, providing examples by multimedia, learners are activated in the language learning. It is beneficial to the students to master knowledge increase the students’ interest and change dull atmosphere. In a word, situational teaching method can make the teaching more efficient and effective.
Key words: Situational teaching method; middle school; English teaching
摘要
当今英语作为一个国际语言已经成为初中课堂一个重要的科目，初中英语教育被广泛关注。初中生渴望学英语但缺少耐心，他们更想表现自己，但有时候又缺乏勇气。他们想吸引他人，得到老师的赞许。所以能适合他们个性，又可以让他们快速接受，同时可以提高他们英语学习兴趣和学习有效性的教学法是许多老师一直追寻的。然而当今初中英语课堂的情况是老师还是运用传统教学法，这种方法不能有效激发学生兴趣。为了改变这种现状，许多老师都在找寻新的教学法，其中情景教学法被视为最适合初中学生个性学习英语的方法。这篇文章的宗旨是表达情景教学法是最适合初中英语课堂的方法，运用它可以激发学生兴趣，调动课堂气氛。创设真是情景，利用多媒体举例子，可以使学生在语言学习中积极主动。它可以有效的帮助学生汲取知识，提高学生学习兴趣，活跃课堂气氛。总而言之，情景教学法让教学变的更高效。
关键词：情景教学法 初中 英语课堂
Chapter one Introduction
1.1 Significance of the method
With the rapid and extensive economic and social development in China, English, as an international language, has been one of the most important courses in middle school. Society puts forward new requirement in English teaching. As a matter of fact, many middle schools still use the traditional method in English teaching. The traditional method neglects cultivate students ’ interest and ability and neglects students are the main part in teaching process. Analysis of sthdents ’ English level and the situation of English class. We can find that the situational teaching method can solve the problem.
The situational teaching method can solve the problem how to arouse students ’ interest in English class. The language real environment is the key to learning English. The situational teaching method can designed language environment close to real life. The situational teaching method is from the real communication and ueses different vivid ways to creat attractive situations. It makes students personally on the scene and inspires their interest to knowledge. The figurativeness of the situational teaching method in English class can promote the study interest and change the model of English class. B.S.Bloom says: the successful language classroom teaching should creat more situations to make the students have more opportunity to apply language.
Teachers turn the difficult contents into concrete materials according to the situational teaching method. That makes the contents more acceptable. The lively image, lifelike language environment can improve learing initiative. It makes students participate in teaching voluntarily, communicate with classmates in English. To be different from the traditional teaching method, teachers use different ways to create language environment. It can motivate intellectual of the students, make students have a deeper understanding of the teaching contents and master knowledge easily. According to this teaching method, it improve students ’ listening, speaking, reading and writing ability and application ability. Students have demand for learning English.
1.2 General Organization of the Thesis
This thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction. It focus on the background of the situational teaching method and the inportance of applying the situational teaching method in middle school English class. Chapter two is the current situation of middle school English class. It points out the problem which students and teachers have in English learning. Chapter three displays the literature review. It is about the knowledge of the situational teaching method. It describes the defination, categories and features of this method. Chapter four is about applying the situational teaching method in English classroom in middle school. It includes the concrete ways and the effect of the situational teaching method. Chapter five is the conclusion of the thesis.
Chapter Two Current Situation of Middle school English Class
English teaching in China has improved a lot, but some problems still exist especially in middle
school. As we all know, to speak and write in English is a basic requirement for Chinese student, which symbolizes one’s ability to express oneself, to communicate with other people, to appreciate another culture and to compete with students from foreign countries. However, due to the exam-oriented education and traditional teaching methods, i.e, “grammar analysis + relevant exercises”, students can hardly make use of what they have learned from the class even though a lot of time and energy have been spent.
English teaching is a key part of the middle school education. In an English class, teaching in English is a matter of course. Teaching in English not only includes teaching the lesson in English, but also includes an English teaching form. Nowadays, a common weak point of our English teaching is the separation of the lesson's content and the teaching form. Teachers are not trying to teach in English but in Chinese. There are many reasons. As we all know,language is used for communication. The Communicated English means that teachers instruct the students and explain questions basically in English, and the students are also required to use English in class. Contemporarily, however, the students in the middle school can't speak very well,neither can they understand why they should use different tones in different time or situation; their vocabulary and expressive ability are limited too. These limitations made it difficult to realize teaching in English in the classes. This produces a vicious circle. It affects the learning interest and the sense of the language of the students. At the same time, it's not good for a teacher to improve his own ability.
Chapter Three Literature review of the Situational Teaching Method
3.1 Definition of the situational method
Situational teaching method is also called the Audio-visual teaching method. It is a teaching method in which the sense of visual and hearing are combined. It originates from the Direct Method and the Audio-lingual Method. It means that in teaching process teachers create or induct concrete and certain situations that are emotional and lively. It utilizes concrete situations and language presentation to form images in the brain. It can inspire students to have certain attitudes to experiences, help students understand and obtain knowledge and skills, and develop students’ mental function. Therefore, it goes against the traditional method of English teaching, cultivating students ’ ability to communicate in a creative way.
This situational teaching method was first developed in France in the 1950s. During 1950s to 1960s, this method was popularized into schools in United States and other Western countries. It was elaborated by Peter Guberina and Paul Rivenc. They thought when people use a language to communicate with others, the concrete situation decides the way, the rhythm and tone. It also keeps the memory longer by using eyes, ears and brains to recognize language. Language was regarded as purposeful activity related to goals and situations in the real world. In the correspondence with these views of language, this method stressed the provision of situation in the presentation of a new structure and in dealing with the integration of vocabulary work (Li Jiqing, 2000). Situation can mean the use of concrete objects and pictures, which together with actions and gestures can be used to demonstrate the meanings of new language items. Situational teaching method regarded language as one structure or a regular system. This method was affected by structuralism deeply. Therefore, teaching contents must be arranged from easy grammar
constructions and sentences to more complicated theory. Teachers should pay more attention to the order of teaching from easy to complicate.
During the process of teaching, the situations that teacher can create are various. No matter what situations are, their main body must be the images. The situational method can be divided into two categories: the direct situational teaching method and the indirect teaching method. The direct situational teaching method is mainly made up of direct images, which refer to the perceptible impression reflected in students’ mind. The objects reflected are mainly non-symbolic real objects. For example, teachers can explain the word “apple ” by showing students a real apple. Then, students can understand the word directly. The indirect situational method is mainly composed of indirect images, which mainly refers to the images in acting, literature, and the description of situations and atmosphere. For instance, teachers can explain “apple ” by describing in words. The two categories of the situational method have the same characteristics. The first characteristic is that no matter what kind of situational teaching method, it always rely on some means to display lively concrete images and the situation always compose of images. It ultimately achieves the goal of serving teaching. The second characteristic is teacher can stimulate students’ feelings and emotions by situation. Teachers can introduce or create certain situations during teaching, for example, teachers can use the real apple to stimulate students have feelings to eat, thus, the students will remember the word “ apple” easily.
3.2 The features of situational teaching method
The situational teaching method is liveliness and perceptibility. The situations refer to concrete and living occasions, not the abstract and boring concepts. The content of situations is concrete and natural. These objects can be felt by eyes, heard by ears, touched by hands and perceived by other sense organs. Thus, it can be learned that liveliness is the first characteristic of the situational teaching method. That is to say, situational teaching method carries out the teaching by some images which dominate the situational teaching method. There is no situational teaching method without images.
It is proved by the psychological research that, the learners can perceive the provided teaching images quickly and enhance the learning efficiency. People perceive different things with different time when things are introduced by different means: when a thing is introduced by language, people recognize with 2.8 seconds; by lines and diagram, 1.5 seconds; by black and write pictures,
1.2 seconds; by color pictures, o.9 second; by objects, 0.4 second. (Gao Haifeng, 2008) From the comparison above, we can know that concrete images have notable effect on people ’s perceptibility. If the images are more distinct, lively and concrete, the perceptible time is shorter. Concrete images cause people to imagine, arouse people ’s interest to perceive and enhance people ’s learning efficiency. Students are the main body through the teaching process. They have many sense organs that can perceive objects directly. If these sense organs perceive the same thing synchronous, it can be perceived immediately. The reason why situational teaching method can be called the “direct method ” is that the perceptibility and liveliness of the situational teaching method bring students intuition of perceptibility. Among the sense organs, eyes and eras are the main ones that students perceive things. The situational teaching method emphasizes the direct perceptibility that base on teaching oral English and combines language with situations closely. Students can see and listening at the same time. So it will achieve the best teaching effect.
Therefore the situational teaching method is called “Audio-visual method”.
The image and emotion of situational teaching method are reality. Image reality inquires the image which is not only the same outside with the real object, but also the same within the spirit. It is not the copy of an object, not as taking a photograph. It is by a simplified figure, suggest technique to get an image which is the same structure with the corresponding object, in order to make the students feel the truth and reality. Then join in to the situation step by step. Emotion reality means real emotion and genuine purpose. Emotion can join in our learning and studying, it will fully mot ivate the students’ imitative. Emotion join in class is the highest boundary of teaching and studying. This can come true by using the pattern of Situational Teaching Method easily.
Chapter Four Application of the Situational Teaching Method
4.1.1 Organizing interesting activities in the classroom
It is argued that teachers should try to make their classroom as pleasant as possible.The atmosphere in which a language is learnt is vitally important:the cold grayness of much institutional education must be compensated for in someway if it is not to have a negative effect on motivation.In order to let students keep a keen interest throughout the class,the teacher should learn to design different and interesting situations.For example,makingdialogues and role-playing are all opportunities for students to take part in classroom activities,which makes students feel that they are in a real situation.By doing so,teachers will stimulate their interest and motivation,and also obtain the purpose of practice and communication.Sometimes,teachers should change the old teaching material into some new one. In others words, teachers may make some necessary change in terms of practical situation. Effective learning is related to the level of engagement of the student. Students with a high level of engagement are active participants in the process of education. So they are encouraged to learn knowledge by involving some activities. For example teachers can design a task for students to write an instruction in English for an instrument. After students have finished it, they are required to say in English about how to use the instrument. It can stimulate their interest in English study as well as their English competence. In a short, to use the situational teaching method in the teaching of English language, the teacher should create or introduce situations that conform to not only the teaching aims and content, but also students’ experience. Otherwise, it won’t get the expected results. The purpose of creating or introducing situations is to move students and let them comprehend the words, sentences, and even the text. Next, the situations must be original, because only the original and special situation can attract students to explore and exert the effect of the situational teaching method. Meanwhile, the teacher should use words to cooperate with the situations, which can instruct students to enter the situation and the role. They can imagine or observe carefully. It has the effect to cultivate students’ thought. All in all, the process of the situational teaching method is a mutual process, and it depends on both the teacher and students.
4.1.2 Applying multimedia to English teaching
Multimedia is the use of computers to present text, graphics ,video, animation, and sound in an
integrated way. It is based on computers and the Internet. With the continuous development of modern technology, multimedia is applied to teaching more and more widely. This is of special significance to English teaching. Because applying multimedia to English teaching could create more and more authentic language environment for the learners, which enables them to communicate in English in real-life situations. Multimedia, as an advanced educational technology, provides more audio-visual-text information. That is ,people can get the information by different senses, such as by sight sense and hearing sense at the same time. Therelative data is given above: when we receive the information by the two senses, we can remember 64%of it. Moreover, multimedia is good for long-term memory. Meanwhile, the varieties of media make it natural to combine reading, writing, speaking and listening in a single activity. Applying modern teaching media to expand situations intuitively. Though concrete objects,pictures,stick drawings,photos,slides,VCD measuringprojectors and other measures,situational teaching can arouse students’interest directly andmake students concentrate on English learning.Intuitionist measures are clearer than theexpression of language and can stir students’curiosity.
4.1.3 Creating atmosphere for English learning in the class
A classroom is the usual place where students spend most time studying at school. However, the general English learning environment in classrooms is not so favorable. English as a foreign language students have much fewer opportunities to use the target language. They do not feel like integrating into the culture and the community of that language. Most English as a foreign language classes are still heavily teacher-centered or teacher-controlled. Students have few choices and are passive in the learning process. The situational teaching method in English class breaks away from the teacher-center convention and offers a student-centered method. Situational teaching methods can stimulate student’s interest and curiosity. Just imagine the teacher as the host of a TV program while the students as the direct participants of the activity. At the very beginning of each class, the teacher can ask some interesting or related topics before starting the lesson so that the class will be attractive at first. E.g., in New Times College English BookⅡ,there is a lesson“Computer and Internet”.Before starting this new lesson, the teacher can give students a question first according to the title: What do you usually do with computer? The students are supposed to have lots of ideas to share with the class. Then follows the second question :Can you predict the development of the computer and the internet in China? Before students answer questions, the teacher can divide them into different groups for a discussion to share their opinions, and advocate students’ cooperative learning. In the course of teaching, teachers should provide more chances for students to talk in class. Discussion, role-play, retelling and interview are some of the ways which may make students involve themselves in English in class. Take the case of interview for example; it is not strange to students. And they often contact with it by watching TV or listening to radio. If teachers adopt this form in the following and let students discuss in class, it must provide more chances for students to talk and motivate students' interest, too. Furthermore, it can also motivate competence and linguistic competence. Meanwhile, teachers should offer students an easier access to visual and audio aids such as films, video and tapes or other related materials offering cultural in sights .It is up to teachers to arouse, develop, and sustain students 'cross-cultural awareness through teaching-learning process
4.2 Findings and Effect
The application of the situational teaching method in middle school English class is successful. Students have more motivation in learning English and the English class in a heated atmosphere.
4.2.1 The situational teaching method is benificial to create a favorable language environment
The problem in China’s English class is lack of real-life language environment. Because of this, many students feel boring and lost interest in English learning. Their English are “dumb English”. According to the situational teaching method, it has the characteristic of reality in images, which connects students recognition activity with emotion activity. Teachers display different scenes in life to create the language environment. That makes students feel the stimulation of English from the process and then apply English personaly. From the real pictures, recording, role-play, scenes in life. Students feel that they are in English-speaking countries. The situational teaching method create favorable language environment, it prompts students to learn and master the knowledge quickly and exactly.
The situational teaching method can arouse students ’ inrerest in English learning. As we all know that interest play an important role in learning. Hermann said that the more the learners feel that they are gaining from learning the language the more motivated they are likely to be and success in language learning encourages positive attitudes towards the second language learning and towards the language learning process itself, so these natural and interesting materials helps to bring up the students ’ interest of learning with situation offered (1980). With the rapid development of tecnology, teachers can use multimedia software to find all kind of natural and interesting materials for students.
The situational teaching method enhance students’ comprehensive quality. First, it improved the practical capability. Language can be best learn by being used actively in class. Unlike the traditional teaching method, teachers use many teaching aids to create language environment so that a new target language word or phrase is present by related things. This method enable students to think in the target language without using their mother tongue. To percept these foreign language in day-to-day life situations, it is benefit to students in fostering the ability to use foreign language freely. The variety of situations makes it natural to improve students’ ability in listening, speaking, reading, writing and obtain higher application ability. Second, the situational teaching method cultivate students’ learning, cooperation and dealing with problems capability. According to the situational teaching method, teacher turn difficult and abstrct contents into concrete and suitable materials. The vivid and lively images, lifelike language environment can improve students ’ initiative. It makes students participate in teaching activities and communicate with teachers and classmates in English voluntarily. Teachers always use some team work ways like role-play or debate when apply the situational teaching method. So students must cooperate with others to finish the task. This can cultivate students ’ cooperation capability. Therefore, the situational teaching method can enhance students’ comprehensive quality.
4.2.2 The situational teaching shorten the psychological distance between teacher and students
To create a friendly and favorable situations can shorten the psychological distance between teachers and students. To create situations can make students learn how to communicate and cooperate with each other. For years, school teaching activity in our country have been carried out passively, and the authority of teachers enlarges the distance between teachers and students. According to the situational teaching method, teachers and students take part in and organize activities together, so there are more personal communication and connect between them, which creates conditions for developing harmonious relationship. Teachers concentrare true feelings on students, thus students will have confidence easily. In our country, many students feel the attention and frank communication from the teachers. The teaching efficiency will be promoted tremendously if the situational teaching method is applied well. The English teacher should intercommunication more in class. For example, they can lead students do role-play and act with them.
Chapter Five Conclusion
This thesis summarizes the present situation of English teaching at middle school and the basic requirement for the students. Based on the theoretical foundation of the situational teaching method. The author depicts the application of the situational teaching method in English classroom teaching and conludes the findings. The study proves that applying the situational teaching method to English classroom can be benificial for English learning and teaching.
The situational teaching method can attract the students ’ interest, help students to get a practicalcommand of the four basic skills of language(listening,speaking,reading andwriting).It gives Chinese students a favorable language atmosphere and paysattention to training the ability of communication.It also makes English classes moreinteresting and lively. The situational teaching method enables the students to become active language learners,who can use English to communicate and manage the future job with the languageskills.It promotes student’s integrated English competence. The situational teaching method presents a challenge to the college teacher.In the pastteachers would find generic careers information and distribute it to classrooms full ofstudents.But these days it’s not enough to“download to empty vessels”.Nowadaysthey must provide more authentic instructional contexts and situations than traditional knowledge-based curricula.It seems clear that teachers need to provide instruction across a more extended variety of contexts ，incorporate a wider set of perspectives ，and implement a more extensive set of instructional strategies than has traditionallybeen the case.When students face some new contexts，unfamiliar perspectives andsome new strategies，teachers need to be much more thoughtful and reflective abouttheir teaching and about their students.To display related situations by usingmultimedia proposes a high requirement for the teacher’s command on computer;alsoit has a higher demand for the teacher’s knowledge of language background.
In conclusion,the purpose of my writing this thesis is by introducing the situational teaching method into thelanguage classroom,students’listening,speaking,reading and writing competencecan be improved in a refreshing way.
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Contents
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Significance of the Method
1.2 General Organization of the Thesis
Chapter Two Current Situation of Middle school English Class
Chapter Three Literature review of the Situational Teaching Method
3.1 Definition of the Situational Method
3.2 The Features of Situational Teaching Method
Chapter Four Application of the Situational Teaching Method
4.1 Concrete Ways of Applying the Method
4.1.1 Organizing interesting activities in the classroom
4.1.2 Applying multimedia to English teaching
4.1.3 Creating atmosphere for English learning in the class
4.2 Findings and Effect
4.2.1 The situational teaching method is benificial to create a favorable language
environment
4.2.2 the situational teaching method can shorten the psychological distance between
teacher and students
Chapter Five Conclusion
Bibliography
Abstract
Nowadays, English, as an international language, has been one of the most important courses in middle school, so middle school English teaching has widely be focused by even more people. The students in middle Schools are eager to learn, but lack of patience; they are eager to show themselves, but sometimes lack of courage. They want to attract by the others, they want the teachers’ praise. So the teaching method which can match the pupil’s characteristic, and make them accept easily, also can increase their interest and learning efficiency is the topic that many English teachers are researching about. As a matter of fact, the current situation of English teaching in middle school is that English teachers still use the traditional methods, which can not arouse the students’ interests. In order to change the situation, many teachers are researching new teaching method, of which the situational teaching method is regarded as the suitable method in middle school English teaching according to the characteristics of middle school students. The aim of this paper is to show situational teaching method is appropriate for middle school English classes and it can improve classroom atmosphere and arouse students’ interest. By designing some real situations, providing examples by multimedia, learners are activated in the language learning. It is beneficial to the students to master knowledge increase the students’ interest and change dull atmosphere. In a word, situational teaching method can make the teaching more efficient and effective.
Key words: Situational teaching method; middle school; English teaching
摘要
当今英语作为一个国际语言已经成为初中课堂一个重要的科目，初中英语教育被广泛关注。初中生渴望学英语但缺少耐心，他们更想表现自己，但有时候又缺乏勇气。他们想吸引他人，得到老师的赞许。所以能适合他们个性，又可以让他们快速接受，同时可以提高他们英语学习兴趣和学习有效性的教学法是许多老师一直追寻的。然而当今初中英语课堂的情况是老师还是运用传统教学法，这种方法不能有效激发学生兴趣。为了改变这种现状，许多老师都在找寻新的教学法，其中情景教学法被视为最适合初中学生个性学习英语的方法。这篇文章的宗旨是表达情景教学法是最适合初中英语课堂的方法，运用它可以激发学生兴趣，调动课堂气氛。创设真是情景，利用多媒体举例子，可以使学生在语言学习中积极主动。它可以有效的帮助学生汲取知识，提高学生学习兴趣，活跃课堂气氛。总而言之，情景教学法让教学变的更高效。
关键词：情景教学法 初中 英语课堂
Chapter one Introduction
1.1 Significance of the method
With the rapid and extensive economic and social development in China, English, as an international language, has been one of the most important courses in middle school. Society puts forward new requirement in English teaching. As a matter of fact, many middle schools still use the traditional method in English teaching. The traditional method neglects cultivate students ’ interest and ability and neglects students are the main part in teaching process. Analysis of sthdents ’ English level and the situation of English class. We can find that the situational teaching method can solve the problem.
The situational teaching method can solve the problem how to arouse students ’ interest in English class. The language real environment is the key to learning English. The situational teaching method can designed language environment close to real life. The situational teaching method is from the real communication and ueses different vivid ways to creat attractive situations. It makes students personally on the scene and inspires their interest to knowledge. The figurativeness of the situational teaching method in English class can promote the study interest and change the model of English class. B.S.Bloom says: the successful language classroom teaching should creat more situations to make the students have more opportunity to apply language.
Teachers turn the difficult contents into concrete materials according to the situational teaching method. That makes the contents more acceptable. The lively image, lifelike language environment can improve learing initiative. It makes students participate in teaching voluntarily, communicate with classmates in English. To be different from the traditional teaching method, teachers use different ways to create language environment. It can motivate intellectual of the students, make students have a deeper understanding of the teaching contents and master knowledge easily. According to this teaching method, it improve students ’ listening, speaking, reading and writing ability and application ability. Students have demand for learning English.
1.2 General Organization of the Thesis
This thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction. It focus on the background of the situational teaching method and the inportance of applying the situational teaching method in middle school English class. Chapter two is the current situation of middle school English class. It points out the problem which students and teachers have in English learning. Chapter three displays the literature review. It is about the knowledge of the situational teaching method. It describes the defination, categories and features of this method. Chapter four is about applying the situational teaching method in English classroom in middle school. It includes the concrete ways and the effect of the situational teaching method. Chapter five is the conclusion of the thesis.
Chapter Two Current Situation of Middle school English Class
English teaching in China has improved a lot, but some problems still exist especially in middle
school. As we all know, to speak and write in English is a basic requirement for Chinese student, which symbolizes one’s ability to express oneself, to communicate with other people, to appreciate another culture and to compete with students from foreign countries. However, due to the exam-oriented education and traditional teaching methods, i.e, “grammar analysis + relevant exercises”, students can hardly make use of what they have learned from the class even though a lot of time and energy have been spent.
English teaching is a key part of the middle school education. In an English class, teaching in English is a matter of course. Teaching in English not only includes teaching the lesson in English, but also includes an English teaching form. Nowadays, a common weak point of our English teaching is the separation of the lesson's content and the teaching form. Teachers are not trying to teach in English but in Chinese. There are many reasons. As we all know,language is used for communication. The Communicated English means that teachers instruct the students and explain questions basically in English, and the students are also required to use English in class. Contemporarily, however, the students in the middle school can't speak very well,neither can they understand why they should use different tones in different time or situation; their vocabulary and expressive ability are limited too. These limitations made it difficult to realize teaching in English in the classes. This produces a vicious circle. It affects the learning interest and the sense of the language of the students. At the same time, it's not good for a teacher to improve his own ability.
Chapter Three Literature review of the Situational Teaching Method
3.1 Definition of the situational method
Situational teaching method is also called the Audio-visual teaching method. It is a teaching method in which the sense of visual and hearing are combined. It originates from the Direct Method and the Audio-lingual Method. It means that in teaching process teachers create or induct concrete and certain situations that are emotional and lively. It utilizes concrete situations and language presentation to form images in the brain. It can inspire students to have certain attitudes to experiences, help students understand and obtain knowledge and skills, and develop students’ mental function. Therefore, it goes against the traditional method of English teaching, cultivating students ’ ability to communicate in a creative way.
This situational teaching method was first developed in France in the 1950s. During 1950s to 1960s, this method was popularized into schools in United States and other Western countries. It was elaborated by Peter Guberina and Paul Rivenc. They thought when people use a language to communicate with others, the concrete situation decides the way, the rhythm and tone. It also keeps the memory longer by using eyes, ears and brains to recognize language. Language was regarded as purposeful activity related to goals and situations in the real world. In the correspondence with these views of language, this method stressed the provision of situation in the presentation of a new structure and in dealing with the integration of vocabulary work (Li Jiqing, 2000). Situation can mean the use of concrete objects and pictures, which together with actions and gestures can be used to demonstrate the meanings of new language items. Situational teaching method regarded language as one structure or a regular system. This method was affected by structuralism deeply. Therefore, teaching contents must be arranged from easy grammar
constructions and sentences to more complicated theory. Teachers should pay more attention to the order of teaching from easy to complicate.
During the process of teaching, the situations that teacher can create are various. No matter what situations are, their main body must be the images. The situational method can be divided into two categories: the direct situational teaching method and the indirect teaching method. The direct situational teaching method is mainly made up of direct images, which refer to the perceptible impression reflected in students’ mind. The objects reflected are mainly non-symbolic real objects. For example, teachers can explain the word “apple ” by showing students a real apple. Then, students can understand the word directly. The indirect situational method is mainly composed of indirect images, which mainly refers to the images in acting, literature, and the description of situations and atmosphere. For instance, teachers can explain “apple ” by describing in words. The two categories of the situational method have the same characteristics. The first characteristic is that no matter what kind of situational teaching method, it always rely on some means to display lively concrete images and the situation always compose of images. It ultimately achieves the goal of serving teaching. The second characteristic is teacher can stimulate students’ feelings and emotions by situation. Teachers can introduce or create certain situations during teaching, for example, teachers can use the real apple to stimulate students have feelings to eat, thus, the students will remember the word “ apple” easily.
3.2 The features of situational teaching method
The situational teaching method is liveliness and perceptibility. The situations refer to concrete and living occasions, not the abstract and boring concepts. The content of situations is concrete and natural. These objects can be felt by eyes, heard by ears, touched by hands and perceived by other sense organs. Thus, it can be learned that liveliness is the first characteristic of the situational teaching method. That is to say, situational teaching method carries out the teaching by some images which dominate the situational teaching method. There is no situational teaching method without images.
It is proved by the psychological research that, the learners can perceive the provided teaching images quickly and enhance the learning efficiency. People perceive different things with different time when things are introduced by different means: when a thing is introduced by language, people recognize with 2.8 seconds; by lines and diagram, 1.5 seconds; by black and write pictures,
1.2 seconds; by color pictures, o.9 second; by objects, 0.4 second. (Gao Haifeng, 2008) From the comparison above, we can know that concrete images have notable effect on people ’s perceptibility. If the images are more distinct, lively and concrete, the perceptible time is shorter. Concrete images cause people to imagine, arouse people ’s interest to perceive and enhance people ’s learning efficiency. Students are the main body through the teaching process. They have many sense organs that can perceive objects directly. If these sense organs perceive the same thing synchronous, it can be perceived immediately. The reason why situational teaching method can be called the “direct method ” is that the perceptibility and liveliness of the situational teaching method bring students intuition of perceptibility. Among the sense organs, eyes and eras are the main ones that students perceive things. The situational teaching method emphasizes the direct perceptibility that base on teaching oral English and combines language with situations closely. Students can see and listening at the same time. So it will achieve the best teaching effect.
Therefore the situational teaching method is called “Audio-visual method”.
The image and emotion of situational teaching method are reality. Image reality inquires the image which is not only the same outside with the real object, but also the same within the spirit. It is not the copy of an object, not as taking a photograph. It is by a simplified figure, suggest technique to get an image which is the same structure with the corresponding object, in order to make the students feel the truth and reality. Then join in to the situation step by step. Emotion reality means real emotion and genuine purpose. Emotion can join in our learning and studying, it will fully mot ivate the students’ imitative. Emotion join in class is the highest boundary of teaching and studying. This can come true by using the pattern of Situational Teaching Method easily.
Chapter Four Application of the Situational Teaching Method
4.1.1 Organizing interesting activities in the classroom
It is argued that teachers should try to make their classroom as pleasant as possible.The atmosphere in which a language is learnt is vitally important:the cold grayness of much institutional education must be compensated for in someway if it is not to have a negative effect on motivation.In order to let students keep a keen interest throughout the class,the teacher should learn to design different and interesting situations.For example,makingdialogues and role-playing are all opportunities for students to take part in classroom activities,which makes students feel that they are in a real situation.By doing so,teachers will stimulate their interest and motivation,and also obtain the purpose of practice and communication.Sometimes,teachers should change the old teaching material into some new one. In others words, teachers may make some necessary change in terms of practical situation. Effective learning is related to the level of engagement of the student. Students with a high level of engagement are active participants in the process of education. So they are encouraged to learn knowledge by involving some activities. For example teachers can design a task for students to write an instruction in English for an instrument. After students have finished it, they are required to say in English about how to use the instrument. It can stimulate their interest in English study as well as their English competence. In a short, to use the situational teaching method in the teaching of English language, the teacher should create or introduce situations that conform to not only the teaching aims and content, but also students’ experience. Otherwise, it won’t get the expected results. The purpose of creating or introducing situations is to move students and let them comprehend the words, sentences, and even the text. Next, the situations must be original, because only the original and special situation can attract students to explore and exert the effect of the situational teaching method. Meanwhile, the teacher should use words to cooperate with the situations, which can instruct students to enter the situation and the role. They can imagine or observe carefully. It has the effect to cultivate students’ thought. All in all, the process of the situational teaching method is a mutual process, and it depends on both the teacher and students.
4.1.2 Applying multimedia to English teaching
Multimedia is the use of computers to present text, graphics ,video, animation, and sound in an
integrated way. It is based on computers and the Internet. With the continuous development of modern technology, multimedia is applied to teaching more and more widely. This is of special significance to English teaching. Because applying multimedia to English teaching could create more and more authentic language environment for the learners, which enables them to communicate in English in real-life situations. Multimedia, as an advanced educational technology, provides more audio-visual-text information. That is ,people can get the information by different senses, such as by sight sense and hearing sense at the same time. Therelative data is given above: when we receive the information by the two senses, we can remember 64%of it. Moreover, multimedia is good for long-term memory. Meanwhile, the varieties of media make it natural to combine reading, writing, speaking and listening in a single activity. Applying modern teaching media to expand situations intuitively. Though concrete objects,pictures,stick drawings,photos,slides,VCD measuringprojectors and other measures,situational teaching can arouse students’interest directly andmake students concentrate on English learning.Intuitionist measures are clearer than theexpression of language and can stir students’curiosity.
4.1.3 Creating atmosphere for English learning in the class
A classroom is the usual place where students spend most time studying at school. However, the general English learning environment in classrooms is not so favorable. English as a foreign language students have much fewer opportunities to use the target language. They do not feel like integrating into the culture and the community of that language. Most English as a foreign language classes are still heavily teacher-centered or teacher-controlled. Students have few choices and are passive in the learning process. The situational teaching method in English class breaks away from the teacher-center convention and offers a student-centered method. Situational teaching methods can stimulate student’s interest and curiosity. Just imagine the teacher as the host of a TV program while the students as the direct participants of the activity. At the very beginning of each class, the teacher can ask some interesting or related topics before starting the lesson so that the class will be attractive at first. E.g., in New Times College English BookⅡ,there is a lesson“Computer and Internet”.Before starting this new lesson, the teacher can give students a question first according to the title: What do you usually do with computer? The students are supposed to have lots of ideas to share with the class. Then follows the second question :Can you predict the development of the computer and the internet in China? Before students answer questions, the teacher can divide them into different groups for a discussion to share their opinions, and advocate students’ cooperative learning. In the course of teaching, teachers should provide more chances for students to talk in class. Discussion, role-play, retelling and interview are some of the ways which may make students involve themselves in English in class. Take the case of interview for example; it is not strange to students. And they often contact with it by watching TV or listening to radio. If teachers adopt this form in the following and let students discuss in class, it must provide more chances for students to talk and motivate students' interest, too. Furthermore, it can also motivate competence and linguistic competence. Meanwhile, teachers should offer students an easier access to visual and audio aids such as films, video and tapes or other related materials offering cultural in sights .It is up to teachers to arouse, develop, and sustain students 'cross-cultural awareness through teaching-learning process
4.2 Findings and Effect
The application of the situational teaching method in middle school English class is successful. Students have more motivation in learning English and the English class in a heated atmosphere.
4.2.1 The situational teaching method is benificial to create a favorable language environment
The problem in China’s English class is lack of real-life language environment. Because of this, many students feel boring and lost interest in English learning. Their English are “dumb English”. According to the situational teaching method, it has the characteristic of reality in images, which connects students recognition activity with emotion activity. Teachers display different scenes in life to create the language environment. That makes students feel the stimulation of English from the process and then apply English personaly. From the real pictures, recording, role-play, scenes in life. Students feel that they are in English-speaking countries. The situational teaching method create favorable language environment, it prompts students to learn and master the knowledge quickly and exactly.
The situational teaching method can arouse students ’ inrerest in English learning. As we all know that interest play an important role in learning. Hermann said that the more the learners feel that they are gaining from learning the language the more motivated they are likely to be and success in language learning encourages positive attitudes towards the second language learning and towards the language learning process itself, so these natural and interesting materials helps to bring up the students ’ interest of learning with situation offered (1980). With the rapid development of tecnology, teachers can use multimedia software to find all kind of natural and interesting materials for students.
The situational teaching method enhance students’ comprehensive quality. First, it improved the practical capability. Language can be best learn by being used actively in class. Unlike the traditional teaching method, teachers use many teaching aids to create language environment so that a new target language word or phrase is present by related things. This method enable students to think in the target language without using their mother tongue. To percept these foreign language in day-to-day life situations, it is benefit to students in fostering the ability to use foreign language freely. The variety of situations makes it natural to improve students’ ability in listening, speaking, reading, writing and obtain higher application ability. Second, the situational teaching method cultivate students’ learning, cooperation and dealing with problems capability. According to the situational teaching method, teacher turn difficult and abstrct contents into concrete and suitable materials. The vivid and lively images, lifelike language environment can improve students ’ initiative. It makes students participate in teaching activities and communicate with teachers and classmates in English voluntarily. Teachers always use some team work ways like role-play or debate when apply the situational teaching method. So students must cooperate with others to finish the task. This can cultivate students ’ cooperation capability. Therefore, the situational teaching method can enhance students’ comprehensive quality.
4.2.2 The situational teaching shorten the psychological distance between teacher and students
To create a friendly and favorable situations can shorten the psychological distance between teachers and students. To create situations can make students learn how to communicate and cooperate with each other. For years, school teaching activity in our country have been carried out passively, and the authority of teachers enlarges the distance between teachers and students. According to the situational teaching method, teachers and students take part in and organize activities together, so there are more personal communication and connect between them, which creates conditions for developing harmonious relationship. Teachers concentrare true feelings on students, thus students will have confidence easily. In our country, many students feel the attention and frank communication from the teachers. The teaching efficiency will be promoted tremendously if the situational teaching method is applied well. The English teacher should intercommunication more in class. For example, they can lead students do role-play and act with them.
Chapter Five Conclusion
This thesis summarizes the present situation of English teaching at middle school and the basic requirement for the students. Based on the theoretical foundation of the situational teaching method. The author depicts the application of the situational teaching method in English classroom teaching and conludes the findings. The study proves that applying the situational teaching method to English classroom can be benificial for English learning and teaching.
The situational teaching method can attract the students ’ interest, help students to get a practicalcommand of the four basic skills of language(listening,speaking,reading andwriting).It gives Chinese students a favorable language atmosphere and paysattention to training the ability of communication.It also makes English classes moreinteresting and lively. The situational teaching method enables the students to become active language learners,who can use English to communicate and manage the future job with the languageskills.It promotes student’s integrated English competence. The situational teaching method presents a challenge to the college teacher.In the pastteachers would find generic careers information and distribute it to classrooms full ofstudents.But these days it’s not enough to“download to empty vessels”.Nowadaysthey must provide more authentic instructional contexts and situations than traditional knowledge-based curricula.It seems clear that teachers need to provide instruction across a more extended variety of contexts ，incorporate a wider set of perspectives ，and implement a more extensive set of instructional strategies than has traditionallybeen the case.When students face some new contexts，unfamiliar perspectives andsome new strategies，teachers need to be much more thoughtful and reflective abouttheir teaching and about their students.To display related situations by usingmultimedia proposes a high requirement for the teacher’s command on computer;alsoit has a higher demand for the teacher’s knowledge of language background.
In conclusion,the purpose of my writing this thesis is by introducing the situational teaching method into thelanguage classroom,students’listening,speaking,reading and writing competencecan be improved in a refreshing way.
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