英语歌曲在小学英语教学中的应用..

Applying English Songs to the English Teaching of Primary School Abstract: With the implementation of the Nine-Year Education Program, teachers and parents lose their way in how to teach students English lessons because there is not going to be any test for the entrance examination. Regular school teachers can’t give students too much assignment; however, parents want to give them more tests to get a higher score. The academic pressure on students has never been lessened but increased. On the other hand, the pupils have their characteristics which differ from adult learners. It turns to be urgent for elementary school teachers to find a suitable way of English teaching. Songs, as an effective way of teaching, are playing a vital role in elementary English teaching. This essay aims to find out the effects of song charts on English learning in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and culture by adopting some methods including classroom observation, interview and oral test, as well as to find out the way of choosing a suitable song for teaching. The results of the research indicate that applying songs in language teaching are popular with students and teachers. The students show their positive attitude towards language learning. Key Words: English song; primary school students; teacher; choosing suitable song 英语歌曲在 小学 小学生如何制作手抄报课件柳垭小学关于三违自查自纠报告小学英语获奖优质说课课件小学足球课教案全集小学语文新课程标准测试题 英语教学中的应用 摘 要:随着九年制义务教育的完善，英语教师和家长都对如何教好孩子的英语感到茫 然(升学考试的压力不复存在，素质教育的落实，学校不能安排太多的考试来检验学习的进 度，但与此同时，家长却希望孩子能参加更多的考试来巩固所学的知识(孩子的学习压力有 增无减.小学生作为一个特殊的个体有着与其他年龄段所不同的特点。歌曲作为一种有效的教 育辅助模式，在小学英语教学中发挥着日益重要的作用。本论通过采访、课堂实践、口头测 试等教学方法研究英语歌曲在小学英语语音、词汇、语法和文化教学中的作用。研究表明英 语歌曲在小学英语教学中的运用受到广大师生的好评。学生表现出浓厚的英语学习兴趣。 关键词: 英语歌曲;小学生;教师;选择合适的歌曲 中国最大的 论文 政研论文下载论文大学下载论文大学下载关于长拳的论文浙大论文封面下载 知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 1 The Current Situation of English teaching in primary school .......... 2 2. The Possibility of using songs in English Teaching ........................... 3 2.1 The characteristics of pupils ............................................................................... 3 2.2 The characteristics of song ................................................................................. 5 2.3 The Benefits of Applying songs ......................................................................... 6 3. Applying Songs to English Teaching .................................................. 6 3.1 To Pronunciation Teaching ................................................................................. 6 3.1.1 The Importance of Pronunciation Learning................................................. 6 3.1.2 The Integration of Songs into Pronunciation ............................................... 7 3.2 To Vocabulary Teaching ..................................................................................... 8 3.2.1The Necessity of Vocabulary Learning ........................................................ 8 3.2.2 Applying Songs to Vocabulary Teaching..................................................... 9 3.3 To Grammar Teaching ...................................................................................... 11 3.3.1The Essentiality of Grammar Learning ...................................................... 11 3.3.2 Using Songs at Grammar Teaching........................................................... 12 3.4 To Culture Teaching ......................................................................................... 13 3.4.1 The Significance of Culture Teaching ....................................................... 13 3.4.2 Integration Songs into Culture Teaching ................................................... 15 4 Choosing A Suitable Song .................................................................. 16 4.1How to choose a suitable song .......................................................................... 16 4.2 The Important Stages in songs choosing ........................................................... 17 5 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 18 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Bibliography.......................................................................................... 21 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Introduction Since the year of 2001, Engli sh has become a required lesson in primary school; from Grade 3. Some people say that the fundamental goal for introducing English to primary school children is to help them develop English language skills and knowledge so that they are able to use English to communicate with others. We will say that this is only partly true. What should not be neglected at the same time is children’s motivation and interests in learning. By offering a foreign language at school, we are aiming to educate “the whole child” rather than only teach them the language. Therefore, the first priority to teaching English at the primary school is to cultivate their interest in learning, motivate them to work hard, help them establish good learning habits and develop useful learning strategies so that they are ready to continue their learning when they move into secondary schools. Introducing a foreign language to children is like opening up another window for them to see the other side of the world. This will arouse their interest and curiosity in different cultures and different ways of communication. It is hard to imagine that a child who gets tired of the subject will work hard and make efforts in learning it. In other words, if a child, after learning English at the primary school, hate s it, you would not expect him/her to work hard on it and he/she would have any interest and motivation in learning it when he/she moves to the secondary school. Therefore, motivation and interest in learning ate fundamental to ensure success in learning a foreign language got child. How to make English lesson vivid and how to attract pupils’ interest in it? Playing games in English teaching is one of the effective ways to motivate children to work hard and cultivate their interests in learning English. As we all know, children enjoy singing songs in their native language and this is a familiar experience for children to be developing positive attitudes towards the foreign language and language learning, and create a desire to continue learning. With the recent development of English teaching, the roles of games in class have been discussed in different aspects. And more and mote teachers use songs in their 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com teaching as they come to realize that playing games in English teaching is very important. The paper aims to explore why songs ate appreciated in English class teaching. When teachers apply songs in English teaching in the classroom, it is beneficial for teachers to pick out the most suitable songs and to design the proper form of exercise for students to do. And there are also several things that teachers should aware during the process of teaching. 1 The Current Situation of English teaching in primary school With the implementation of the Nine-Year Education Program , teachers and parents even lose their way in how to teach students lessons because there is not going to be any test for entrance examination . Regular school teachers can’t give students too much assignment, however, parents want to give them more tests and send them to cram school. The academic pressure students feel is never lessened but increased. Most English teachers in primary school feel it is more and more difficult to do this job. They not only have to design interesting games or activities but also have to meet parents’ requirement for good grades. However, these young learners feel helplessly in English class. Moreover, most cities only have two English classes every week. It is a big challenge to take care of students’ interest, scores and patents’ expectation within such limited time. Therefore, English teachers should find out what the students need and how to lead them to learn English efficiently. The former Soviet Union educationist and psychologist Zan Kefu says: “Once teaching method touch mood and will field of students, touch sprit of students it can give play to their highly effective function on need.” Famous educationist Su Huo Lynskey points out: “If students have not the hope of studying, our ideas and imaginations turn to dust and ashes, turn into a mummy.” He thinks: to a great extent, that teaching results depends that how students’ psychological condition is. Mood is high, then the result doubles; Depressed, then the result is small. The interest is a kind of psychological characteristic and is the way of learning. Besides, it’s a kind of power in organizing activities, which can motive students to explore further knowledge. 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Einstein even said that interest is the best teacher. English philosopher looked also thought that education should arouse the learning desire and enlighten the learning interest. If the students are interested in study, they will regard studying as an amusing but not a boring thing. In order to change this kind of phenomenon, an English teacher should adept suitable means of teaching approaches, such as games, role-plays, songs, etc. Among diverse teaching English approaches, singing activities draw much attention. The value of using songs in the primary English classroom has been widely recognized. Both teachers and learners find songs interesting and relaxing. Using songs in class can often bring a change to the routine procedures of language presentation and practice. Many teachers have realized that songs can serve as magic teaching tools to develop learners’ language abilities. 2. The Possibility of using songs in English Teaching 2.1 The characteristics of pupils Halliwell(1992)says that the young children do not come to the language classroom empty-handed. They bring with them an already well-established set of instincts, skills and characteristics, which will help them to learn a foreign language. These features of children can be enumerated as follows. Firstly, children are already very good at interpreting meaning without necessarily understanding the individual words. Secondly, they have the basic communication strategy. This means children's ability to grasp the meaning in their cognitive aspects. Thirdly, they already have a great skill in using limited language creatively. This means children's creative use of limited language resources in their linguistic aspects. Fourthly, they frequently learn indirectly rather than directly. This means children's capacity for indirect learning in their learning activities .Fifthly, they take great pleasure in finding and creating fun in what they do. This means children's instinct for play and fun in their emotional aspects. Sixthly, they have a ready imagination. This means the role of imagination in their emotional aspects. Seventhly, they, above all, take great delight in talking. This means the instinct for interaction and talk in their daily life. These instincts, skills, and 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com characteristics of children should be taken into consideration when teachers set up the aims and contents of language teaching for young learners, produce teaching and learning materials, and apply teaching methods to the classroom. Besides, Children are naturally curious and active. They are full of enthusiasm and often show a lot of eagerness to participate. If children are happy, feel secure and in a threat-free environment they are more likely to enjoy English. It’s often said that children's attention span is short but we sometimes find small children can concentrate on one thing for a fairly long, time but not on other things. So it really depends on what they do. Children will not concentrate if the teacher lectures them! This means we need to consider how to create a real desire for children to learn English; we need to provide opportunities for children to experience and experiment with the new language; we also need to provide a variety of opportunities for children to use the language in different contexts, and finally provide timely feedback for children to know how they are doing and what needs to be improved. Phillips(1998)also mentions that as a general rule, the younger the children are the more holistic learners they will be. Unlike adult learners, the young learners respond to the meaning underlying the sentences but tend not to make analytical studies of the language. They are usually prepared to enjoy the activities that the teacher has prepared for them. These factors mean that it is important for teachers to think of different ways to maintain high degrees of motivation with children. Phillips makes the following suggestions to teachers: Provide a clear meaningful purpose for using the language in activities. The activities should be simple enough for children to understand what is expected of them. The task should be within their abilities: it needs to be achievable but at the same time sufficiently stimulating for them to feel satisfied with their work. The activities should be largely orally based--with very young children listening activities will take a large proportion of class time. Written activities should be used much less with younger children. Children of six or seven years old are often not yet proficient in the mechanics of writing in their own 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com language. It is common sense that if an activity is enjoyable, it will be memorable. The language involved will “stick", and the children will have a sense of achievement, which will develop their motivation for further learning. The kinds of activities that work well are games and songs with actions, total physical response activities, tasks that involve coloring; cutting, and sticking, simple repetitive stories, and simple spearing activities that have an obvious communicative value. Enjoying learning is likely to lead to success while success will make learning more enjoyable. 2.2 The characteristics of song Song possesses beautiful appeal in itself. If the teacher blends as well as English sentences and songs, it will make a learning drill that is dull and dry, mechanical, repeated, to become vivid and dramatic. Basically all children enjoy singing songs in their native language; they will naturally enjoy doing the same in another language. Therefore songs sometimes are good attractors that draw back learners’ attention to ensure a smooth running class. Songs demonstrate very clearly the rhythmic nature of the English language. The interchange of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables are emphasized. When learners sing a song, they will certainly practice the timing of stressed syllables. Once they have learned the songs, the words, the patterns, the tones, and the rhythm can stick in their mind for the rest of their lives. At the beginning stage of language learning it is important to expose learners with language chunks. Songs are usually rich in these language chunks. Therefore teachers should use songs in the classroom as an important way of language input to the learners. Moreover, it is a good idea to relate the song to actions. Young learners will certainly be interested in what teachers have them do if it is physically involving them. If a song can physically involve the young learners, they will sing with understanding and this will increase the learning effectiveness. Here is an example, when the pupils learn the words about transportation, such as trains, buses, ships etc, they remember these words as quickly as they can through learning the song named ”Train is coming.” 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com which is related to these actions. 2.3 The Benefits of Applying songs The value of using songs in the primary English classroom has been widely recognized. Both teachers and learners find songs interesting and relaxing. Using songs in class can often bring a change to the routine procedures of language presentation and practice. Many teachers have realized that songs can serve as magic teaching tools to develop learners’ language abilities, e.g. in helping learners in learning pronunciation, vocabulary, sentence patterns; in helping pupils’ memorizations develop a natural sense of the language. On the other hand, songs can help teachers created a relaxed, stress-free classroom atmosphere. When students learn songs and sing songs, actually they are communicating with other students by authentic language. They would feel immediate feedback because when they can immediately ding songs by learning them. According to Krashen’s first hypothesis, Language Acquisition and Learning Hypothesis, authentic materials and real language use are important. Listening to music are enjoyable experiences. Learners are less defensive and their inhibitions about acquiring a second language are lessened. And when they are more attentive, they are more receptive to learning English. Through learning songs, they are exposed to authentic examples of a second language. They subconsciously feel that they need to use English but not memorize grammar or words. Especially for Chinese students, English teachers should think about those great effects when acquiring English language by singing songs. Besides, songs can improve their memory, vocabulary and creative of language. 3. Applying Songs to English Teaching 3.1 To Pronunciation Teaching 3.1.1 The Importance of Pronunciation Learning English phonetics is such an important thing that we have to put it in the first place in English teaching. Firstly, English phonetics is the science, which studies the characteristics of human sound making, especially those sounds used in speech. It also provides methods 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com for their description, classification and transcription. Closely connected to the study of grammar and lexicology, it can help the English learner to better understand vocabulary and grammar. Secondly, English phonetics is an essential part of language and also an important element in communication. We study English in order to interact with foreigners. One must have good communication to be able to comprehend others when speaking or reading aloud. This is proven by the fact that the better we pronounce English, the more easily we can understand each other and be understood. Thirdly, phonetics has long been neglected in English teaching. An English teacher must demonstrate good pronunciation. Teaching phonetics is a major premise for English instruction because without any knowledge of pronunciation and intonation, the outcome will not always be satisfactory. 3.1.2 The Integration of Songs into Pronunciation Learning some English song can help pupils improve their ability of pronunciation sense of language. With the help of song, the pronunciation and some new phonetic symbols can be corrected. There are some classic English songs which have been widely sung by English learners and have been a part of English learning. They make English learning easy and interesting. Pupil may find it different to remember a paragraph, but easy to remember a very long English song. And there are many English songs which can be win universal praise when using in the classroom teaching of pronunciation, such as “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ”, “Rain”, “Who Has Seen the Wind ”, “Fly A Kite”. Take “Get up on your feet!” for example: Hi everybody! Hi Mar.! What’d ya say? Let’s play! Get up on your feet and ch ch ch today Ch ch up (ch ch ch ch ch ch ch) Ch ch down (ch ch) To the left (ch ch) 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com To the right (ch ch) Now everybody ch ch all around Now, ch ch ch ch Sit back down! Repeat rapidly, saying "ti ti..." Repeat slowly, saying, "lu lu..." Hi everybody! Hi Mar.! What’d ya say? Let’s play! Get up on your feet and ch ch ch today Ch ch ch ch Don’t make a sound! CH By teaching this simple song, pupils can well practice the sound /? / /u: / and /i: /. Song is the inspissations of language which can not only provide pupils with enjoyment of beauty, but also purify people’s soul. So it is good and useful for elementary students to recite some simply but beautiful songs. 3.2 To Vocabulary Teaching 3.2.1The Necessity of Vocabulary Learning As is widely known, vocabulary, the building material, is essential to a language. It is one of the three basic components (pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar), and is of utmost importance to people’s communication and language learning. Language emerges first as words, and the coining of new words never stops. Pronunciation and grammar are presented by vocabulary. The linguist David Wilkins once summed up the importance of vocabulary in his book Linguistics and Language Teaching: Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. According to Hocking D, spending most of one’s time on words and expressions rather than grammar will improve one’s English very much. Without enough words one cannot communicate with others, no matter how wonderful his grammar and pronunciation are, because vocabulary is the carrier for people to communicate with each other. To achieve the purpose of communication, people need to learn vocabulary 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com first. Words enable people to speak, read and write with clarity, confidence and charm. Furthermore, to learn a new language is to some degree to build a new network, which is expressed by vocabulary. These lead to the fact that vocabulary forms the very backbone and essence of any language. Therefore, acquiring adequate vocabulary is of critical importance to language learners. 3.2.2 Applying Songs to Vocabulary Teaching The traditional study approach in vocabulary teaching is simply made students spell the new word for several times and try their best to recite it. The limitation of this approach is apparent. Pupils are quite different from adults. Some major different are as follow: Adults pay more attention to form while children pay more attention to meaning. Children are not as self-conscious as adults in speaking the language or in making errors in front of others. Adults can concentrate more on what they learn while children cannot concentrate on learning for a very long period. Adults often learn with a clear purpose or motivation in mind, while children do not usually have a clear purpose for learning another language as they may regard it just as another school subject. Adults can learn by listening attentively and by taking detailed notes about vocabulary and grammar, while children often cannot sit still for very long and they need to move and do things. Adults are good at regulating themselves in learning; they plan for revision and use other sources to help them. Children, on the other hand, are less able to regulate themselves; they are not good at planning and monitoring their learning and need to develop such abilities. Adults are good at conceptualizing, generalizing and theorizing things, while children are good at understanding concrete things not abstract concepts. A suitable song can provide pupils with a relax and tense-free environment. Here is a piece of song about colors: 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com You see them all around. There is red on the stop sign, Green on a tree, Blue in the sky and sea. This a song about colors, Colors you see them all around. It's about the happiest song in town. All you have to do is stand up and sit down. All you have to do is stand up and sit down. RED stand up, BLUE stand up, YELLOW and GREEN stand up. RED sit down, BLUE sit down, YELLOW and GREEN sit down. RED stand up, GREEN stand up... BLUE stand up, YELLOW stand up... This is a song about colors, colors; You see them all around, There is yellow on bananas and green on a tree, blue in the sky and the sea. RED stand up... BLUE sit down... 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com GREEN sit down... This is a song about colors, colors; You see them all around. It’s about the happiest song in town. All you have to do is stand up and sit down. All you have to do is stand up and sit down. All you have to do is stand up and sit down. At very beginning, the teacher can just divide classroom into different groups, say, red, green, yellow and so on. When hearing “red stand up” the red group students stand up and sing the next part of song. By singing and reacting, pupils can memorize the most of the color words. The study of month is difficult for the primary school students because some of the months have more than three syllables and quite long. By using the familiar melody of Two Tigers, pupils can remember these months much easier. 3.3 To Grammar Teaching 3.3.1The Essentiality of Grammar Learning In studying a foreign language, an understanding of the internal rules of the language is essential; it will affect the accurate use of language exchange. Many experts (Cameron, 2001) think that even at the primary stage, Children also need some grammatical knowledge to help them firmly and correctly master the language. But in our teaching, teachers like teaching their students too much grammar. So many students understand language without ability to speak. (Lenneberg, E.1967) Obviously, this deviates from the original intention of our language learning. Also the grammar learning is too difficult and boring for the children. They will lose their interest in English little by little. For many Chinese, English learning is boring and difficult because of the traditional grammar teaching. Applying songs to grammar teaching-a happy teaching 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com method can get over these disadvantages. The course of learning is so enjoyable that the children will be more and more interested in English. Interest is the best teacher. English is not hard for the person who is interested in it. It is hard to make pupils to remember a lot of rules in English, while, it is easy to divert the pupils’ attention. Thus, if the teacher makes use of the pupil’s unconscious attention properly, cultivate them to develop conscious attention purposely, the pupils will remember the grammar knowledge very well. 3.3.2 Using Songs at Grammar Teaching In conventional class, there is a lot of stress put on students who try to master the target language. Schultz once said, “…Stress is a major hindrance in Language learning process. This process (learning language in a traditional way) is by its nature consuming and stress-provoking…raise the stress level to a pint at which it interferes with student attention and efficiency and undermines motivation…. One method has been developed to make students forget that they are in class…relax students by engaging them in stress-reducing task” It should come to our notice that there is a high level of stress in the classroom because students have to face unfamiliar or unknown grammatical structures. Therefore, students often feel uncomfortable and insecure in class, which inevitably affects their ability to learn. As s result, songs can help lower their anxiety and make them feel comfortable so that they can learn more. It is believed that when students singing songs, they relax and have fun. Since students know that they are playing games and want to communicate with others efficiently, they experience little worry about making mistakes and do not try to correct themselves in single sentence. When students are free from worry and stress, they can improve their grammar in a unconscious way. Here is a song related to phrasal verbs and the imperative: Look out for that car, watch out next time. Come on hurry up or you’ll be left behind. Hold on a minute, oh carry on its okay. Wake up stop sleeping; it’s the middle of the day. 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Speak up I can’t hear you. Slow down eating your food. Give up smoking and wash up the dishes too. Get up, back to work. Fill in this form. cross out that mistake now go and mow the lawn. Put out that cigarette, switch on the light. Look up world in the dictionary tonight. Throw out the rubbish, throw away the key. Show us ’round, ring up somebody. Turn up music, turn off the news. We’re going out tonight, try on these shoes. Knock me out, and knock over my cup. I’ll brake down if we don’t finish this up. By teaching this song, students well practice the sentence structure of the Imperative, such as “ring up somebody, Give up smoking and wash up the dishes…”. At the same time, they will get familiar with the phrasal verbs, look out, give up…which hard for pure memorization. 3.4 To Culture Teaching 3.4.1 The Significance of Culture Teaching For a long time, it is assumed that a good understanding of language entails effective communication. But understanding language alone is not sufficient for good intercultural communication. Cultural aspects of language and the cultural backgrounds of speakers of that language have to be understood well. Seelye argued that: since the basic aim of a language class is to have the students learn to communicate in the foreign language, it is obvious that if fairly common emotions and thoughts cannot be understood apart from their cultural reference. Then these cultural referents must be taught in the language classroom. Notstrand stated that in addition to native language skills and dome insights into the culture and society of the speakers of that language. Just as Lado (1967) pointed out in Language Teaching: A Scientific Approach, we 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com can’t teach a language well if we haven’t mastered the culture background of it. Language is a part of culture. Therefore one can never learn a language well if he doesn’t know its cultural code and criterions. On the contrary, the deeper one understands the history, culture, tradition, customs, living style and even some daily life details of the foreign country, the better one use the language of that country. In the new National English Curriculum Standard, culture has been listed as one of the teaching contents and teaching goal. At primary level, the students should have a general idea about the culture of English-speaking countries and the difference between Western and Chinese cultures. But what ate the exact pedagogical objectives of culture teaching? Seelye’s “seven goals of cultural instruction”, may provide an answer pertinent to this question. According to him , the teaching of culture has following goals: To help students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviors. To help students to develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave. To help students to become more aware of conventional behavior in common situations in the target culture. To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language. To help students to develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence. To help students to develop necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture. To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people. Valette summarizes the goals of culture teaching in five similar categories: Culture awareness, comprising geographical knowledge, knowledge about the 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com contributions of the target culture to world civilization, knowledge about difference in the way of life s well as an understanding of values and attitudes in the second language community. Command of etiquette. Understanding of daily life, including unfamiliar convections. Understanding of cultural values, requiring interpretation of the target ulture and the learner’s own culture. Analysis of the target culture. 3.4.2 Integration Songs into Culture Teaching Some primary school teachers do pay attention to the teaching of Western culture, but they have overemphasized the simple adoption of Western culture. Because primary school students are still immature in their thinking models and ideology system, and their even Chinese cultural identity has not been fully established, when the teacher overemphasizes the importance of Western culture and let them simply imitate Western culture, they may get a false impression that Western culture is better than Chinese culture and even lose their patriotism. In this way, the inappropriate teaching of Western culture may have some negative influence on the development of the students’ ideology system and even eat into their ethnical amour-propre. In the Western culture teaching process, considering the students’ age, their level of maturity, and their previous language proficiency, as well as their general educational background, teachers should try to use integrating-song method. WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS. SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN, are the two songs we can use when get the students familiar with some customs of celebrating Christmas in western countries. At the beginning of the class, the teacher gives a brief introduction about Christmas in United states while playing one of these tow songs, mainly reviewing what the students have learned before about this topic. The purpose of this step is to stimulate the students’ interests in this lesson and it won’t take more than five minutes. Pictures of some typical scenes of Christmas will be shown, for example, send 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Christmas cards, decorate the Christmas tree, exchange Christmas gifts, eat Christmas cake. Considering the particular psychological characteristics of primary school students, dome real objects such as Christmas stocking, or a toy of Father Christmas would definitely arouse great interest from the students, so in this step, the teacher would use as many different media as possible to illustrate his introduction of Christmas. Also because of the limitedness of the students’ English level, sometimes the teacher would need to explain some parts of his introduction in Chinese. Then the teacher should explain the meaning of some cultural-loaded words and expressions such as “Santa Claus” and “Merry Christmas”. For example, who is Santa Clause, where dose he live, why is he so popular among western children. What’s more the teacher can divide the students into small groups and let them sing the songs and exchange Christmas gifts with each other. Of course, in the process of giving out Christmas gifts, only English can be used. 4 Choosing A Suitable Song 4.1How to choose a suitable song Probably the most important thing about choosing a song to do with a class is to make sure that the lyrics are clear and it can be very frustrating for learners not to understand a word. Choose a singer with a nice voice, like Frank Sinatra. The recording should also be a good one: a studio album is probably going to be better than a live version if you have a choice. A CD also gives much better sound than a cassette. There is also the issue of whether or not the language is a suitable level of difficulty. And the language itself should be suitable. The suitability of the subject matter is a particularly important issue especially when teaching young learners. It is also a question of whether your students are going to like the song. However, it is difficult to find songs the students like which are actually useful language-wise. So what the teacher really wants is a song with some useful language in it. Abba’s Money is an example of that—one with both an interesting lexical field and the second conditional in it. 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Applying a song into class is not just a question of pressing “play”. It is a bit like ding any listening exercise—in planning what you are going to so with a song you want to thing about productive pre-, during- and post-listening tasks that ate going to be language-rich. Songs that work best are almost invariably those that produce some sort if response to the music. Songs with a good story line make a good choice, apart from anything else because the students can then agree or disagree on what happened ,and perhaps why it happen and who was to blame. A song which requires the teacher to actually work out what is gong on is also a good choice—because then the learners can discuss that. You Don’t Know My Name by Alice Key is a good example of that. 4.2 The Important Stages in songs choosing If anything, the build-up to the listening is really the most important stage. The pre-listening activity, in other words. The teacher should also to consider whether or not they need to preteach some of the vocabulary, and how to so with it. When it comes to the listening stage the teacher could provide the lyrics but include in them, which has to be corrected, or multiple-choice type answers. If the teacher wants to use “fill-in-the-blanks”, note that he will find it a question of trial-and-error: some of the thing you pick out will prove impossible for your learners to catch. Blanking out the words at the end of alternate lines, but not the words that they rhyme with, is one fun alternative. Using the song has mentioned before as example: Look out for that car, watch out next time. Come on hurry up or you’ll be left behind. Hold on a minute, oh carry on its okay. Wake up stop sleeping; it’s the middle of the day. Speak up I can’t hear you. Slow down eating your food. Give up smoking and wash up the dishes too. Get up, back to work. Fill in this form. cross out that mistake now go and mow the lawn. 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Put out that cigarette, switch on the light. Look up world in the dictionary tonight. Throw out the rubbish, throw away the key. Show us ’round, ring up somebody. Turn up music, turn off the news. We’re going out tonight, try on these shoes. Knock me out ,and knock over my cup. I’ll brake down if we don’t finish this up. Cloze worksheet can be designed as follow: __ __for that car, __ __next time. __ __ __ __ or you’ll be left behind. __ __a minute, oh __ __its okay. __ __ stop sleeping, it’s the middle of the day. __ __ I can’t hear you. __ __ eating your food. __ __ smoking and __ __ the dishes too. __ __, __ to work.__ __ this form. __ __that mistake now go and__ the lawn. __ __that cigarette, __ on the light. __ __ world in the dictionary tonight. Throw __the rubbish, throw __ the key. Show us ’round, __ __ somebody. ___ __ music, turn __ the news. We’re going out tonight, __ __ these shoes. Knock me out ,and knock over my cup. I’ll __ __ if we don’t __ this __. 5 Conclusion Ever since the practice of the policy of reform and opening to the outside world, primary school English teaching in china has made remarkable achievements and reached unprecedented level in both scale and quality. According to incomplete 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com statistics, there are about 4832000 primary school students learning English in China. (Liu Daoyi, 2001) the past decade witnesses a rapid progress in primary school English teaching. The situation in getting better and better and brings us much excitement but at the same time we are also in face of many problems. One of them is that there are considerable number of primary school English teachers who are still teaching with traditional approach which focuses on phonetic transcriptions, grammar and vocabulary. This approach may easily result in teacher-centered classroom teaching in which students can only play a passive role. English education should be an active process in which students actively experience, participate, practice and create so as to ensure the development of their cognitive and language ability. The advantages of primary school students in learning English are reflected in their strong imitative ability, thirst for knowledge, good memory, strong desire in demonstration, creative spirit as well as light psychological burden. However, they also have some disadvantages like weak apprehensive ability distracted attention and dislike for repetitive and mechanic exercise. If we only ask students to study and understand language knowledge, remember phonetic and grammatical rules, their advantages in language learning will be neglected and this is why many students fall behind and gives up English learning just because they cannot remember grammatical rules or vocabulary. Therefore, primary school English teachers must start with students’ physiological and psychological characteristics, follow the general rules of language learning, try to modify their teaching style and help students to activate their interest in learning English, cultivate their language awareness and improve their English communicative ability with the help of activities like listening, speaking, reading, writing, performing, singing, playing, drawing and watching. Then how to further improve primary school English teaching? To achieve this goal, we must try to explore more efficient teaching approaches. In this research, I adopted some methods including interview questionnaire, classroom observation and oral test to investigate the effectiveness of songs-teaching approach in English teaching. The results of the research indicate that applying songs in language teaching are 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com popular with students and teachers. The students show their positive attitude towards language learning. Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis. I gratefully acknowledge the help of my supervisor, Professor Chen Liang, who provided with me endless source of profound English teaching knowledge, supplied me with the most valuable support and precious advice, and carefully and patiently scrutinized my thesis from its manuscript to the end. Without her guidance, encouragement and understanding, this thesis might not have reached the present form. My sincere gratitude also goes to all the teachers who have taught me during my four years’ study at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology. I have benefitted a lot from those respectable teachers in this university. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my deep thanks to all the teachers and pupils from Shangyu Experimental Primary School for providing me with a chance to carry out the investigation, and their support and patience. Needless to say, any shortcomings in this article are mine alone. 中国最大的论文知识平台www.lwxiezuo.com Bibliography [1] Brown,H.D. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002. [2] Cameron, L. Teaching Languages to Young Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 2001. [3] C. E. Echkersley. The Function of the Teacher. Macmillan [M]. Publishers Limited, 1982. [4] George Herbert Betts. Conditions Necessary to a Good Recitation [M]. Random House，1982. [5] Halliwell, S. Teaching English in the Primary Classroom. [M]. Longman Group UK Limited. 1992. [6] Lado, Robert. Language Teaching : A Scientific Approach.[M]. London: Oxford university press, 1967. [7] Lenneberg, E. The Biological Foundations of Language.[M]. 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