2024年4月16日发(作者：电脑组装配置单)

May 2008, Volume 5, No.5 (Serial No.53) Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN1539-8072, USA

Study on classroom activities in children English class

YANG Mei-jun

(School of International Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China)

Abstract: Though classroom activities in children English class have been studied by many scholars, there is

a lack of real class investigation and analysis on this subject. Combining the observations of classroom activities

in a real children English class with the interviews with the child students and the teacher in that class, this paper

presents various classroom activities used in real children English class. Among all the activities of greetings and

free conversations, guessing new words, pair or group work, games, songs, chants, making stories and

competition, child students prefer games, role play, making stories, and competitions, in which children can take

the initiatives; while the teacher favors greetings, guessing new words, role play, and group work. The problem of

the activities that children students like the most is that they may cause some disturbance in class. To solve this

problem, the author thinks that these activities are better to be put at the end of the class.

Key words: children English; classroom activity; preference

1. Introduction

With the prevailing heat of English studying, many Chinese children begin to learn English at an early age.

However, different from adult English learners, children usually lack the autonomy in language learning.

Therefore, their major learning is completed during English class. Thus it requires the children English class to be

informative, effective, and at the same time interesting enough to catch children’s attention. To achieve the above

effects, classroom activity is a crucial point to decide if one class is successful or not. Nowadays, the strategies of

classroom activities in children English class are being widely studied by many scholars, and a number of guiding

theories have been proposed.

LIU Chen thinks that classroom activities should be closely related to the content and aim of the teaching. At

the same time, it should enable all the child learners to be actively involved. He believes that classroom activities

should be designed to enhance children’s English ability in listening, speaking, reading, and their ability to

produce language output. XU Gui-xiang maintains that proper classroom activities can help set up children’s

confidence in English learning, and at the same time lay a foundation in the future language learning and

communication. He points out that classroom activities should include real body movement so that students can

learn English naturally through listening, speaking and playing. QIAO Guang-pin and WANG Dao-mei provide

several feasible options for classroom activities at the beginning of a class like greeting, singing, games, free talk,

watching films or programs, speaking chants. They believe in these ways, students’ interests are aroused, and a

harmonious environment is created. ZHANG Shu-yan provides a five-step model in children English: leading in,

presenting, imitation, drilling, and application. She thinks that classroom activities should be conducted in

YANG Mei-jun (1983- ), female, graduate student of School of International Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University; research fields:

ESP, translation studies, discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics.

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Study on classroom activities in children English class

accordance with the five steps. ZHU Xiao-lin discusses one specific aspect of classroom activity—group

cooperation. She argues that the group cooperation can provide every child a chance to participate in the class. In

addition, she thinks the group work can both facilitate the English learning and develop children’s sense of

cooperation and competition. When children watch and listen to what other group members do, they can learn

from others’ strong points to offset one’s weakness.

All these studies have provided enough guidance in classroom activities. However, there is still a lack of

analysis on the feasibility of the classroom activities in real classes. Besides, their studies are more theoretical

than practical, therefore, need to be applied and tested in practice. Without implementation and evaluation, it is

quite difficult to decide whether the methods discussed above are really practical in the children English’s

classroom. Moreover, some methods are probably more favored by the teachers instead of students. Therefore, the

purpose of this paper is to investigate the classroom activities in real children English class, and find out which

kind of activities are preferred by teachers, and which are more favored by children learners. By such an

investigation, the author tries to analyze the problems existing in the classroom activities in children English

teaching, and provide some suggestions.

2. Research questions

In this paper, the following questions are being addressed:

(1) What are the classroom activities adopted in real children English class?

(2) Whether there is any difference in the preference of classroom activities between teachers and children

English learners. If there is, then which classroom activities are preferred by the teacher and which are more

favored by children English learners? And what are the probable reasons for the difference in the preference of

types of classroom activities between teachers and children English learners?

(3) Whether there are some problems in the classroom activities. How to solve the problems?

3. Methodology

The class being investigated is provided by a private children English training school. The teacher of the

class is very experienced with more than 20 years’ experience in primary school English teaching. There are

totally 14 children in the class aged from 11 to 13 years old and they are mainly in grade five or six in their

primary schools. Each week there are two meetings in that class: on Tuesday from 7 to , and on Sunday

from 8 to Each meeting is divided into two 55-minute individual sections. That is to say, for each week,

they have 4 sections of class with each section lasting for 55 minutes. The book used in class is Look, listen, and

learn compiled by L.G. Alexander and translated by DAI Wei-dong. Most of the students in that class have already

studied for one year under the guidance of this teacher, and each member in the class is quite familiar with others.

The method adopted is a combination of class observation and interviews with the teacher and students.

Totally, ten consecutive weeks of their class are observed, which consist of forty sections. And after five weeks’

observation, brief interviews with each student were made; the teacher of this class was also interviewed.

The focus of the class observation is on the classroom activities carried out in each class. And the interview

with the students is mainly on their preference for certain classroom activities. The interview with the teacher of

each class is a little more complex, involving the following aspects:

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