Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background

English curriculum standard (the draft 2001) clearly required that teachers shoulddesign corresponding classroom activities to stimulate students’ learning interest, explicitthe teaching objectives and lay the foundation for the new class when they design everyclass. This step is lead-in.Thus it can be seen that lead-in plays a very important role in English classroomteaching. In the beginning of a class, teachers should utilize the first several minutes toattract students’ attention and arouse their positivity so as to create good condition for thelatter content to get students prepared for the new lesson. Lead-in is the bedding of thewhole class, whose significance and necessity can not be ignored.English curriculum standard (2005) emphasized teachers should hold the teachingidea that taking the student as the center and cultivating students’ English applicationability for the purpose.English curriculum standard (2011) advocate that teachers should start formstudents’ interest, life experience, cognitive level, then adopt task based teaching ways tomake students develop comprehensive language application ability through their ownexperiencing, practicing, participating and communicating in learning.It means that senior high school English teaching is a process of teachers andstudents contacting, interacting and developing together. Thereby, democratic and openforms should be established to set up the relaxed classroom atmosphere, in which studentsare with desire under the guidance of teachers try to percept, practice, cooperate, fulfilland achieve.

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1.2 Research Significance

Lead-in, as the first teaching step of a class, is one of the most basic steps in theEnglish classroom teaching. It is obviously a short but significant step, which plays acrucial role in arousing study interest, accomplishing teaching goals and improvingteaching quality. With a proper lead-in of a class, students will be more concentrated and focused in the classroom teaching process so that learners may take an active part inlearning while finishing the whole class tasks. As a result, a lead-in step contributes muchto making a class smoothly and successfully.English teaching has made a great progress during the basic education revolution inrecent two decades. Some educational experts did some study about lead-in, but most ofthem didn’t think it was a specialized part and treated lead-in only as a teaching technique.Thus, the relevant theories regarding to lead-in were not in-depth, which caused manyteachers ignore lead-in.The author of this thesis, thus, dedicated herself to knowing about the presentsituation of English lead-in in senior high school and to finding out the main problemsand finally attempted to seek out the proper solutions. It would be useful and feasible forthe teachers to acknowledge the great importance of lead-in, as well as for them to designthe popular lead-ins, which would stimulate students’ interest that may widely encouragethem to get involved in the class and promote their achievement in the end.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Research Abroad

In the 1970s, C. Etal and Turney summarized the function of lead-in in the bookSydney Micro Skills as follows: gaining attention, arousing motivation, establishingteaching goals, defining learning tasks and making links. To they, it is very important toattract students’ attention at the very beginning of each lesson; thirsty for knowledge isthe most practical and significant factor among students’ learning motivations; lead-inshould set up explicit targets to help the students keep a good state of mind for learningnew lesson. Lead-in should establish the connection between the old and the newknowledge, which allows the teacher to start the new material smoothly and naturally. It is rather crucial to draw students’ attention before a new lesson. A teacher who isgood at guiding will use various ways to stir up students’ unintentional notice and leadthem to intentional notice. Beautiful blackboard-writing and graceful voice and intonationmay deeply appeal to students. Their strong curiosity and intentional notice is easilybrought out. Hence, vivid and vigorous lead-in ways should be diversiform to increasestudents thinking positively.

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2.2 Research at Home

Hu Shuzhen (1996) raised that lead-in can also be named as lecture-starting. As oneimportant step of classroom teaching, usually, lead-in can be used at the beginning of theclass likewise throughout the whole class. She elaborated the functions, styles and basicrequirements of lead-in.Yan Chengli (1999) came up with some principles of lead-in and introduced someoptimized lead-in methods about some other subjects. Li Rumi (2000) viewed that the part of lead-in is a kind of teaching art. According tohim, the lead-in art should be used to etch deeply in the hearts of the students as the effectof first knock of a hammer, to attract them as tightly as a magnet.Wang Baoda (2001) pointed out that before teaching new knowledge or doingteaching activities, teachers should lead students into a new study condition withconsciousness and intention in his Learning in skills and ending skills. The goals oflead-in are leading in new lesson, enlightening students, stirring up interest, secretlyrevealing motivation, creating atmosphere and so on. At the meanwhile, he introducedsome lead-in types of Chinese language teaching.Zhou Qi and Ye Hongping (2003) proposed that how to guide students to thesituation naturally and appropriately by making use of many ways according to thedemand of the situation.Fu Jianming (2005) indicated delicately-designed lead-in is quite necessary and rec-ommended some common methods and principles of lead-in.

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Chapter Three Research Design.......12

3.1 Research Questions.........12

3.2 Research Participants.....12

3.3 Research Instrument......12

3.4 Research Procedures......12

Chapter Four Results and Discussion....14

4.1 Results and Discussion of Classroom Observation......14

4.2 Results and Discussion of Questionnaires........17

4.3 Results and Discussion of Interview .....27

4.3.1 Contents and Results of Interview....27

4.3.2 Discussion of Interview....30

Chapter Five Major Findings and Suggestions ......31

5.1 Major Findings and Suggestions.....31

5.2 Limitations ....34

Chapter Four Results and Discussion

4.1 Results and Discussion of Classroom Observation

This paper takes the performance of senior high school students and teachers ofthree grades in English classroom as the object of observation. Lead-in part of a class ismain observation aspect. The methods used in lead-in and students’ performance inlead-in part were the key point of observation. The author make use of the opportunity that practice in the affiliated high school ofteachers college internship from March to June to do the observation of lead-in part insenior high school English classroom teaching. The author visited 30 classes taught by 14English teachers and all the classes were new lessons. Teachers commonly use this method, because it is direct and easy and students canunderstand teachers’ intention immediately. Teachers often use such expression tointroduce the theme, today we are going to learn, in this class we will learn...

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Conclusion

The author has a basic understanding about the current situation of lead-in inEnglish classroom teaching in senior high school through the investigation of theaffiliated middle school of Gannan Normal University English classroom teaching. Thefollowing major findings and suggestions of the investigation are presented by the way ofanswering the questions put forward in the beginning of the paper. According to the results of the investigation, most of teachers and students thinkthat lead-in was good for students to learn new content. Lead-in can attract students’attention, broaden students’ knowledge and help students naturally get in to new content.It plays a positive role in attracting the students’ interest of using the methods of thelead-in in classroom teaching. Therefore, lead-in in senior high school English class needsmore attention and worthy all the teachers to be elaborately designed.

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Reference (omitted)