The Application of Role-play in Junior English Teaching
Introduction
The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to enable the students to use the foreign language in work or life when necessary. But the present practice in the English learning & teaching (ELT) classroom in China could not provide satisfactory conditions for both teachers and students to achieve the goals by the traditional teaching model. How to make English learners feel the real language situation and context when learning English is worth studying. Role-play is an effective way to make English learners reach the goal. This paper aims to attempt to study the application of role-play activities in junior English classroom.
Before the discussion of the application of role-play in junior English teaching, the writer wants to do a brief introduction about role-play. Role-play is a learning activity in which you behave in the way somebody else would behave in a particular situation from the OXFORD Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary. In pedagogy, it is a common language learning activity where students play different roles and interact from the point of view of the roles they play. As everyone knows, most of junior students are tired of English for remembering words or grammar. VanMents (1989) in his book claimed that a major advantage of role-play was that “it was highly motivating and gave students simple, direct and rapid feedback…”So role-play activities can highly motivate students’ interest. In role-play activities, students are encouraged to actively participate in activities that are designed to promote the use of the language. Role-play activities provide students opportunities to practise English in a safe and relaxed atmosphere. In fact, role-play has been one of the effective ways especially in English teaching.
This paper consists of three parts： Part 1 is the causes of using role-play in junior English teaching, Part 2 is the application of role-play in junior English teaching and Part 3 is the important points in role-play in junior English teaching. Let’s study them step by step through this paper.
1．The causes of using role-play in junior English teaching
1.1 The current situation of English teaching
The current situation of English teaching in junior high schools English teachers may often get chances to see an English lesson taught either by their colleagues or by other English teachers. The following phenomena are observed to quite common in the junior English classroom in many places in china. The teacher enjoys performing on the stage while the students act as good mannered audiences, listening to the teacher carefully and quietly, copying important notes from the blackboard into their notebooks. The teacher asks questions, and students raise their hands and answer them. Sometimes to make the class look lively and interactively, the teacher asks some pairs or groups to come to the front to act out a dialogue or put on a short play. But the rest of the class watch the performance, and give a warm clap at the end of it. This is a very typical lesson in the junior English room. But in fact, many students just listen or write down important information in the English class or answer questions together. In recent classes, the students’ utterance is no more than “yes”, “no” or only a few words. Besides that, we can’t neglect another common phenomena that many students’ high scores in written English exams do not match their competence in using English. Current English teaching focuses too much on language knowledge such as words, grammar… For example, in teaching reading: at the post reading stage of reading teaching, teachers often rely upon reading aloud, asking comprehension questions, Sometimes even sentence by sentence translation is conducted. And then focus out those grammars and new words to let students copy down to remember. Maybe we can consider these activities inadequate to fulfill the task of developing learning. But the teacher ignored to provide the students with opportunities to use them. Consequently students spend most time memorizing the so called language points and practising them in multiple-choice exercises, rather than using language in a real and authentic way.
2.2 The New Curriculum Standards stress students-centered teaching activities
With the New Curriculum reformation going on in China, more and more English teachers are realizing that the traditional teacher-dominated classroom should be replaced by the student-centered one. New Curriculum Standards stresses student-centered teaching activities. It is recommended that English teachers should adopt pleasing and active teaching methodologies to stimulate students’ interests, build up their language competence and eventually promote their
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ideation, imagination and creation. An increasing number of English teachers have realized the importance of changing their teaching methodologies to meet the requirements of the New Curriculum Standards. So teachers’ roles should shift from the traditional knowledge provider and activity controller to the learning facilitator, classroom supervisor and participator. On the other words, the teacher should give more time to students and let students to be the owner of the classes and the teacher should pay more attention to the language practice than the language introduction. At the same time, many Chinese scholars point out many problems to find new teaching ways. “The major problem is how to balance a relaxed learning atmosphere with the achievement of better grades in English examinations within necessarily limited classroom time” (Du Minghuan, 2006:1). “The teaching of English in junior school has not been given enough attention and there are actual difficulties in the teaching work, such as the environment of English-study is not ideal enough, the opportunities of hearing English is quite few, the influence of the number of the classmates, the influence of mental state of the students, etc.”(Li Yun, 2006:4). According to these problems about our countries’ junior English teaching, strengthen the training of the language knowledge is not the only way to get the goal. Role-play can help students and teachers a lot. Role-play uses different communicative techniques and develops fluently in language use, promotes interaction in the classroom, makes teaching material live and increases motivation. There is a simple example. When students learn to greet others by English ways, the teacher can give students some different roles to practise so that students can remember this new knowledge instead of reciting them many times. Here peer learning is encouraged between teachers and learners in the learning process takes place.
