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<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > several questions in Chinese English classroom teaching</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Cui Gang</h1>
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, explanations and exercises in the classroom</h1>
In the 1980s, English teaching was basically equivalent to the explanation of knowledge, which was "full of classrooms". By the late 1990s, under the influence of communicative pedagogy, English teaching became a kind of skill development, that is, the goal of English teaching was to cultivate the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. This is a good phenomenon, but in the process of cultivating skills, many people can not grasp the relationship between knowledge and skills well, from one extreme to the other, resulting in English teaching from "full classroom" to overemphasize the practice of the tendency. In general, the reasons for this phenomenon are as follows: first, it is influenced by the theory of language acquisition; second, the relationship between language knowledge and language skills is not very accurately grasped under the influence of language acquisition theory.
Here we first distinguish between several concepts: mother tongue acquisition, second language acquisition, and foreign language learning. Related to our language teaching, it often involves the problem of mother tongue acquisition, and most of our Chinese language acquisition is mother tongue acquisition. For example, in the Xinjiang region, in addition to learning Chinese in the native language, you also learned Uyghur in a Uyghur environment, that is, the acquisition of two languages. Our English learning is the study of foreign languages. However, in the past few years, whether internationally or domestically, the distinction between second language acquisition and foreign language learning has become more and more diluted, resulting in many of the English learning theories in our country being directly taken from the theory of second language acquisition. When we talk about how foreign languages should be taught and how to learn them, we often use the acquisition of mother tongue as an example. Some teachers find it easy, easy, and efficient to learn in their native language, and they can naturally speak and write in a language environment. Therefore, when teaching English, it is easy to directly borrow some of the experience learned in the mother tongue to foreign language learning. Personally, mother tongue acquisition is not necessarily as efficient as we think. The environment in which mother tongue acquisition and second language acquisition is acquired is very different from that of foreign language learning, and the difference between learning English in the United States and the United Kingdom and learning English in China is too great. Let's look at two equations:
6х365х10=21900 (hours)
21900÷40÷l5=36.5(year)
According to the results of research on mother tongue acquisition, it generally takes six years for a child to have good listening and speaking communication skills in a normal environment, but written expression is not yet good. In this way, we can roughly calculate the total time required for the acquisition of the mother tongue. With 365 days a year of exposure to the mother tongue for at least 10 hours a day (children are exposed to their mother tongue in different forms as long as they are awake), it takes at least 21,900 hours for a child to acquire his mother tongue. Suppose we learn a foreign language in a school environment, with 40 weeks a year and 15 hours a week, then if we learn English exactly in the way we learned it in our mother tongue, it will take at least thirty-six and a half years to have good listening and speaking skills. In this way, learning English from school will not be able to learn English well until at least in your 40s. That's not to say we don't have an environment where mother tongues have learned. Whether it is the status of teachers or the environment in which students are exposed to and use English, it is not as good as in the United Kingdom and the United States. I'm putting this data out to illustrate that don't think that acquisition is about learning English easily, that is, being efficient. The difference between mother tongue acquisition, second language acquisition and foreign language learning also determines that we cannot completely copy the theory of mother tongue acquisition and second language acquisition to guide our foreign language teaching.
Let's look at the relationship between language knowledge and language skills. My personal understanding of language knowledge and language skills is like this: the original English teaching emphasized the transfer and learning of language knowledge, and in the 1990s, it emphasized the cultivation of language skills. The question we need to consider is, where does the skill come from? In fact, language knowledge and language skills are inseparable. For example, I like to drink soup, but I can't always take a pot of water to boil the soup, there must be original materials in the pot, there will be soup to drink. There is nothing wrong with developing language skills, the key is how to cultivate them, can language skills exist independently of language knowledge? I'm afraid not, without adequate language knowledge, language skills probably won't be high. There are two kinds of language knowledge, one is implicit knowledge and the other is explicit knowledge. What is implicit knowledge? It is the knowledge that we have, but cannot express and explain explicitly. For example, when we listen to a foreigner speaking Chinese, we can quickly judge whether the person's Chinese is authentic or not, or whether his grammar is correct, and have the ability to make this judgment, but we may not be able to explain why it is right or wrong, so many of our knowledge about the mother tongue belongs to implicit knowledge. In addition, we often say that the student's sense of language is very important in teaching, what is this sense of language? The sense of language is based on this implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be expressed. For example, nouns, singular and plural, plus s or es; how to constitute the present tense and the past tense, etc., these can be expressed as explicit knowledge. Foreign language learners, our students, including the teachers here, a lot of the knowledge we have about vocabulary and grammar is explicit knowledge.
Let's look at the role of knowledge in two languages. Implicit knowledge is often closely related to our true verbal communication skills. In the process of verbal communication, being able to respond freely and communicate smoothly is often the use of implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is the basis of implicit knowledge, and after sufficient training, explicit knowledge can be transformed into implicit knowledge. For foreign language learners, a lot of implicit knowledge is transformed from explicit knowledge. In addition, it can monitor the behavior of language, sometimes we have said a sentence after realizing that we are wrong, tense or person is used wrong, these self-reflective monitoring behaviors are because we have relevant explicit knowledge, to help correct the errors in language. The greatest usefulness of explicit knowledge is examination. A very simple example, such as our TOEFL test, many Chinese students to score less than 640 points feel humiliated, if american students take this test, can get more than 550 points is considered good. Does this mean that Chinese have a higher level of English than Americans? That's definitely not. The reason is that many of the test questions in the language test are explanatory knowledge, and people in the native language can only rely on intuition and implicit knowledge to judge, so the difficulty is greater, and the more explicit knowledge we have, the easier it is to judge. Explicit knowledge is very important in the exam, and it is very troublesome to judge by the sense of language alone.
Where do they come from? Implicit knowledge comes from two sources: First, a great deal of exposure to linguistic material. Through the exposure of a large amount of language material, our brain automatically summarizes language knowledge. The human brain is very perfect, and it will automatically process after touching things. I teach psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics in school, and neurolinguistics has a lot to do with neuroanatomy. I often tell students that the human machine is too perfect, and nature has created such a perfect and harmonious mechanism for you. For example, the hand cut and bleeds, precisely to prevent external virus germs from invading the body. Similarly, the human brain is also like this, which is automatically processed after contact with language materials; second, because of the environment and hours of learning languages, it may not be enough to rely on a large number of contact with language materials, and sometimes the transformation of explicit knowledge is also needed. But the only way to transform explicit knowledge is through a lot of practice and repeated training. Where does explicit knowledge come from? One is the teacher's narration, and the other is the student's self-study. From the perspective of the distinction between explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge, fundamentally speaking, an important goal of foreign language teaching is to transform explicit knowledge into implicit knowledge. Language knowledge and language skills are inseparable, and without knowledge there can be no skills. But knowledge alone is not enough, and a large number of language practice activities must be carried out. That's why we say that knowledge is just as important as skill. It cannot be said that valuing skills ignores knowledge, so that skills become water without a source and wood without a root. Nor can it be emphasized that knowledge is not valued on skills, so that knowledge is of little use. The two are mutually reinforcing and inseparable.
After solving the language knowledge and language skills, let's return to the explanations and exercises. Explanation is mainly related to language knowledge, practice is our practice, and explanation is as important as practice. The classroom is the main channel for imparting language knowledge, and the explanation and practice in the classroom should complement each other, impart language knowledge through explanation, consolidate the language knowledge learned through practice, and transform explicit knowledge into implicit knowledge as much as possible through practice. This is often the case in the classroom, and it is rare to see parts or links of the explanation in high-quality classes or when someone is listening to the lectures. I have less access to the front-line teaching of basic education, and most of my impressions of classroom teaching come from these high-quality courses, and after reading it, I feel that the explanation part is very insufficient, and the teacher enters the practice stage after a rush. One reason for this is that many people think that the explanatory part should not be too much, otherwise the language should be taught as a knowledge type lesson. But we think that explanation and practice are equally important, and it is enough to explain first. The meaning of "enough" is that the amount of the first explanation should be enough, and the second explanation should be clear. If the amount of explanation is not enough or not clear enough, the student's practice effect will also be reduced. Many people think that through a lot of practice will naturally acquire the knowledge and rules of the language, this view is mostly based on the acquisition of the mother tongue, in the teaching of foreign languages can not do this, I am skeptical. When we study a unit, there are often many class hours, and the time of explanation and practice of each class should be different. Each lesson has its own teaching objectives, a little more in the first lesson, a little less in the later lessons, and a little more practice. Don't neglect the explanation, don't think that the practice is important and think that the explanation is not important.
In addition, there is such a phenomenon in the explanation and practice, the text itself is not handled enough, but a lot of time is spent doing some exercises that have nothing to do with the text or have little to do. A classroom is an organic whole, and what is explained in the front and what is trained later should be closely integrated. We find that there is a lot of disconnect between what is trained in a lot of classes and what is explained. The texts written in the textbook are the main source and essence of language input in the learning process of students, and the language phenomenon in the texts must be well learned first, so as to have the basis for doing other exercises. Explain well and practice properly.
Above we discussed the problems of explanation and practice in classroom teaching, and it seems that the emphasis is a little more. Please don't misunderstand what I mean, I definitely do not advocate returning to the old road of "full classroom irrigation", and conciseness should be a basic principle of English teaching. The reason why I do this today is because there is a tendency to emphasize practice over explanation, and I hope to have an impact on this.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > two, mechanical exercises and free exercises</h1>
The so-called mechanical exercises are some mechanical and repetitive language training activities such as reading, reading, and memorizing. I remember that a typical feature of the junior high school English textbook edited by Mr. Liu Daoyi in the 1980s was sentence pattern exercises. This is a claim of behaviorist psychology. Behaviorist learning theory originally derived from the Russian scientist Pavlov's concept of "conditioned reflexes". This concept mainly refers to the reinforcement of certain habits of animals through repetitive reflexes under specific conditions and gradual fixation. This concept of conditioned reflexes uncovers the most basic physiological mechanisms of the phenomenon of language learning. Behaviorist learning theory has four main characteristics: First, it emphasizes the learner's observation and imitation of language phenomena. Learners mainly observe and imitate language phenomena that occur in adults and the surrounding language environment. Observation is the first step in language learning, and imitation is the basis for language practice. Second, emphasize the repeated practice of learners. In order to develop language habits, learners need to practice it mechanically. This form of practice is often boring, but it is also an exercise in the learner's will. Third, emphasize the role of encouragement for learners in the learning process. When learners achieve certain grades, positive encouragement should be carried out in a timely manner so that their learning behavior can be fixed. In this way, teachers need to help learners develop active language behaviors. Fourth, in the specific learning process, emphasis is placed on sentence pattern exercises. The purpose of this language exercise is to give language learners the opportunity to repeat and practice the target language uninterruptedly, so as to achieve a "stimulus-response" effect, and ultimately help them form language habits. Such exercises are rare now. Although it is boring, such exercises are very beneficial for students to master the basic knowledge and basic skills. Now people are more advocating free practice, student-centered, and exerting students' subjective initiative. What are the benefits of this free practice? It improves the authenticity, sociability and creativity of the exercises. But one of the current tendencies is that mechanical practice is becoming less and less desirable and gradually being replaced by free practice. Anyone who uses the methods of reading, following, and memorizing to teach is considered uncreative and too backward. Mechanical exercises and free exercises should be mutually reinforcing. Before mastering the basics, it may not be appropriate to enter the free practice stage prematurely to complete a certain task. First, I'm afraid that these tasks can't be done well, and you want students to not even master the basic sentence patterns and vocabulary, and what they use to express their thoughts. Second, the effect of learning is not necessarily good. After learning a language phenomenon, after the explanation, you should first do some mechanical exercises, and then do some guided mechanical exercises, but emphasize that students imitate the use of sentence patterns, phrases and new words in the text, do not go too far from the topic, and then there is guided free practice, and finally start free practice. It is a process of gradually moving from mechanical to free practice. Ask teachers to reflect on our classroom, assign a task to students to perform a certain communicative activity, and observe how many words and sentence patterns students use are related to what they have just learned in this lesson. Aren't all of our exercises reinforcing the expressions we've learned in this lesson, and how much of those expressions do students want them to master? In the lessonS I have observed, the sentence patterns and vocabulary that I have learned in this lesson cannot be said to be absent, but there are too few.
Why are we so eager to turn mechanical exercises into free exercises? This has a lot to do with the popular teaching concepts now. Mechanical exercises are too boring, and now we all advocate making it easy for students to learn English easily and happily. I would like to remind the teacher that learning English is not for the sake of hilarity, english class is after all a language skills class, not a game class. Students can't speak the right English, and the so-called fun, communicative, and creative nature is meaningless. All the activities we engage in are supposed to serve the teaching of English. For example, how much time it takes to rehearse a play, how much time it takes to actually rehearse a play, and how much expression can be really learned. The same number of expressions we can use other activities can not be mastered in a shorter time. We need to have a concept of efficiency, not just to look good and have fun. So I want to emphasize that the fun and various activities should be exquisite, do not deviate from the core of English teaching, all these activities must serve English teaching. I would like to remind our teachers here that learning English is a long process and not to rush to the point of success. We English teachers are also English learners, you can think about the English we have learned for so many years, what level of English we have reached, and the idea of rushing to success is not good.
In addition, you can't blindly ask for fun, and part of English learning is boring and tedious, which is something that learners must endure. Just emphasizing interest, not eating at all, it is impossible to learn a foreign language well. Therefore, reading the text aloud with the teacher and tape, and memorizing the text is a must for English learning. Here I would like to quote Wang Zongyan, an old predecessor in the field of foreign languages: Learning English should prevent "three diseases" and adhere to "four more". These three diseases are: impetuous and always want to succeed; afraid of effort, always want to go to the top; superstitious bookseller networks, rather than choosing reference books with high quality and suitable for their own teaching level. From this point of view, we must let our students know that English learning is a hard work. "Four more" means listening more and talking more; reading more and writing more; making more changes; and looking back and summing up experience more. All excellent skills are practiced hard, and suffering is a necessary stage, but when suffering is exhausted, it is willing to come, and it is bitter to eat bitterness, and what follows is to be willing to be sweet. Some people are unwilling or afraid to do mechanical exercises and spend more time doing free exercises, just to emphasize the fun of English teaching, and dare not tell students to work harder.
Here, I would like to emphasize that I do not think that mechanical practice is better than free practice. I emphasize mechanical exercises here only to prevent the tendency to overemphasize free practice.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > three, encouragement and criticism</h1>
Encouragement and criticism are mainly about how to deal with students' language mistakes. In the English classrooms we observed, we hardly saw teachers criticizing students. Some students sometimes make a lot of mistakes in their speeches and performances, but the teacher even says that the versa good, and the students' pen homework does not correct the mistakes or point out the wrong sentences, and when scoring, C and D are almost invisible, but most of them are A or A+. Encouragement and criticism refers to when to tolerate students' mistakes and when to point out students' mistakes. Slogans such as student-centered, cultivating students' interest and self-confidence are all nice to say, but they are out of shape when implemented. Encouragement and criticism should be complementary, without criticism, encouragement is not valuable, cheap encouragement for long-term use is of little value.
The attitude towards students' language errors is directly related to our views on two issues: the first is that students make mistakes, which is inevitable in the inevitable stage of English learning, and the second is about the relationship between accuracy and fluency. First, let's look at the first point. This view is undoubtedly correct. Foreign language learning is a long internalization process, students from the beginning only understand the mother tongue, until the end of mastering a new language system, need to go through many different stages (such as beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc., and some of the points are more detailed, such as: beginner, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, etc.), from the perspective of interlanguage research, At each stage, the target language used by the student is a transitional language, which is neither a native language translation nor a target language to be learned in the future. This transitional language inevitably has a lot of mistakes. Language error is a necessary stage in the process of learning English, mistakes - unconscious mistakes - errors - conscious errors - errors - self-correction errors, this is the only way for every English learner, without this process it is impossible to achieve fluency. Therefore, students should be encouraged not to be afraid of mistakes, and to patiently listen to and understand the students' "fragmented" English. In addition, learning English focuses on communication, communication focuses on the understanding of meaning and the correctness of information, and grammatical errors in students' language that do not affect comprehension can be ignored. But this does not mean that the student's language error can be left to it, on the one hand, the teacher should insist on using the correct language to educate the student, on the other hand, when the student's language error affects the transmission of information, it is necessary to make the necessary correction under the premise of encouragement, so as to ensure the accuracy of the English of future students.
When to be harsh and when to be moderate should be decided in terms of the specific circumstances of the student and the teaching goals. A student's English foundation is relatively poor, self-confidence is poor, he should be more encouraged, tolerant, and higher requirements for good students, which is student-centered, teaching according to aptitude. Now in many cases our English teaching has the so-called student-centered approach that ultimately leads to everything acting in the face of the student, and what the student is satisfied with is good, and vice versa is bad. It is unreasonable to completely take the happiness and satisfaction of students as the standard, do not misinterpret the meaning of student-centered, but determine according to the specific situation of students, and be determined by teaching objectives. In the mechanical exercise should emphasize the accuracy of the language, for the instructive exercise can be appropriately moderated, in the completely free practice can be as little as possible to correct, tolerance, do not interrupt the student's train of thought. The requirements for the four levels of mechanical exercises, guided mechanical exercises, guided free exercises, and completely free exercises are becoming more and more relaxed, and cannot be blindly relaxed. Bill Gates said: The world is not fair, your parents and teachers may think you are good, but the society and your boss may not agree with them. If we really want to think about students, we must let students experience this, and we can't encourage students not to criticize a little.
Now, let's look at the relationship between accuracy and fluency. The phrase "without accuracy, fluency loses its foundation" is true, but this statement only emphasizes the importance of accuracy, and the correct attitude should emphasize both accuracy and fluency. We can distinguish between two cases: for beginners, do not overly correct the errors in their language, but encourage them to communicate in English more; for learners above the middle level, they can correct the bias in their language appropriately, but on the premise of not discouraging their enthusiasm for learning. In other words, the higher you get to the senior grades, the more you emphasize accuracy. In addition, different occasions should have different requirements. When chatting with friends or playing a role in class, fluency should be the mainstay, not accuracy. Accuracy should be emphasized when writing essays or speaking in class.
Finally, I'll make a basic summary. Although we have also been exposed to many foreign theories, we cannot ignore our own traditions and ideas. Our traditional way of moderation can be fully applied to today's English teaching, and the core of the way of moderation is to look at problems dialectically and comprehensively. We propose that English cannot be taught as knowledge, but that we cannot solve one problem while going to the opposite side of the problem, from one extreme to the other. Knowledge is not the whole of English, but it is not to say that knowledge is not important, can not go to the skill at once, and dare not teach knowledge, to look at the problem dialectically and comprehensively. Similarly, the same is true for different practice methods and students' language errors, dialectically and comprehensively looking at the problem, not being extreme, not going to extremes, so as to ensure that English teaching in our country develops in the right direction.
(This article was first published in Research on Foreign Language Teaching in Basic Education, No. 2, 2009)