Teaching Art of Middle School English Teachers

On the Teaching Art of Middle School English TeachersbyA thesis submitted toThe School of Foreign Languagesof Shangrao Normal Universityin partial fulfillment of the requirementfor the degree of Bachelor of ArtsUnder the Supervision ofThe School of Foreign LanguagesShangrao Normal UniversityJanuary 5, 2010AbstractThis paper mainly focuses on the teaching art of middle school English teachers. The English teachers in the classroom are both a director and an actor, and English teaching is an art. In order to improve the level of the English teaching art, a variety of teaching methods need to be fully mobilized, such as language, body movement, multimedia and so on. It will relatively make students receive knowledge easier. In this paper, some superficial view on how to improve the level of English teaching art will be put forward, hoping to benefit peers.Keywords:English teacher; teaching art; speaking art; body language; dressing art; class designing; multimedia applied; psychological counselingContents1. Introduction (A general survey of the issue) (4)2. Categories and Application of the Teaching Art (4)2.1 The Art of Speaking (4)2.1.1 firmer foundation (4)2.1.2 Humorous language (5)2.1.3 Abundant knowledge (5)2.2 The Art of Body Language (6)2.3 The Art of Dressing (7)2.4 The Art of Teacher’s Own Behavior (8)2.5 The Art of Class Designing (9)2.6 The Art of Multimedia Applied (11)2.7 The Art of Psychological Counseling (12)3. Conclusion (14)4. References (14)1. Introduction:This thesis intends to focus on the issue that how to improve the teaching art of English teachers. As English is being used wisely around the world, the teaching art of English teachers will become more and more important. All the English teachers are trying their best to find a comfortable way to teach English. However, how to improve their teaching art? Some advice will be given here.2. Categories:2.1 The Art of SpeakingSpeaking art in class is the art of teaching practice by the creative use of sound language forms. The excellent speaking art of a teacher is an important guarantee to improve the teaching effectiveness and quality in class. Czech educator Comenius paid more attention to speaking art of teachers in class. In his “Great Teaching Theory”, he pointed out vividly, “one teacher who can teach fair-sounding and clearly should make his voice immerse into his students’ hearts like the oil, and turn it into knowledge at last”③. Jean Hersholt, one of the exponents of modern teaching theory, thought that language has the character of artistic if one is articulate. Even though he is only a second-rate scholar, he can also be an excellent teacher. The former Soviet Union educator Suhomlinski’s view on speaking art in class is even more profound and incisive. In his "Art of Education", he stressed that “the language of teachers is one kind of tool that affects students in their mind, and nothing can replace it.” And he thought the speaking art of teachers is one of the basic qualities that one teacher should possess and it is the guarantee of teaching success④. From this, we can see speaking art in class plays an important position in the whole class teaching and it plays an irreplaceable role. So, as English teachers, how to improve their language art?2.1.1 Firmer foundationAs an English teacher, English is the foundation. Whether your English is standard or not, fluent or not, have a firmer foundation or not, is directly related to your entire English language teaching. During my internship, I suffered the loss. My pronunciation of some English words is non-standard, such as: "river" I will read as "liver", so that my students scratched their heads, Thanks to my instructor, he pointed out my fault promptly so that I promptly rectified. There is a problem about basic skills, such as grammar, new words and soon. If you have not solid basis for grammar and words, you will suffer great hardship. For example, you will find lesson preparation is very laborious. When you teach, you should still spend time learning at the same time. While a teacher who has good basic skills don’t need to re-learn, they just need to improve their teaching methods continually. So they will teach easier than you.2.1.2 Humorous languageIn English teaching, a good English teacher not only needs a firmer foundation, we also need sense of humor to motivate the atmosphere of the classroom. I want to ask, which one likes to listen to one boring lesson that an abundant experienced teacher taught? So how can we be humorous and witty then?For example, in order to let the students often get the "feedback" of their own progress, on the right time teacher can insert a small story, a little game, a little riddle, a proverb, a message, a song in English, a grammar games, an English tongue twisters, or an English Riddles,. For example, teacher on the blackboard write this sentence "Who is closer to you, your mom or your dad"? (Father and mother, who is closer to you?) The answer is: "Mom is closer because dad is father". Because father (father) sounds like farther (further), so mother is closer①.For another example, question: "Why are young men unwilling to date the daughter of the Fortunes?" Answer: "Because it is Miss Fortune." "Miss Fortune" sounds like "misfortune" (unfortunately), so none of young people would be willing to date "misfortune". If this episode is used for the regulation of classroom atmosphere, students will be very interested in this class and this also allows the students not to study as a burden but as an interest.2.1.3 Abundant knowledgeNot only English teachers, but also teachers in various subjects should be noted that, although you teach only one subject, if you have a very wide range of knowledge, and the knowledge is related to many subjects, your teaching process will be subject to unexpected results.For example, during my internship I taught English, but I am a tour guide on the other hand and I am familiar with many attractions. When we learned the unit 3 of Grade 1 in the high school –“Travel Joural”, some students talked of Sanqing Mountain. I just visited therebefore, so I told them something about Sanqing Mountain and some tourism-related considerations. Students were immediately enthusiastic, and they look at me with adoring eyes. So enthusiasm for learning was also increased. At the same time, the sense of success for being admired made me teach more actively, and the effectiveness of the class was also surprisingly good. .2.2 The Art of Body LanguageBody language is a broad term for forms of communication using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, sounds, verbal language, or other forms of communication. It forms part of the category of paralanguage, which describes all forms of human communication that are not verbal language. This includes the most subtle of movements that many people are not aware of, including winking and slight movement of the eyebrows. In addition，body language can also incorporate the use of facial expressions. We communicate a lot of information about our feelings through our body language: our facial expression, the way we position ourselves, distance from others, and gestures. We receive this information primarily through our vision.Nowadays more and more people participate in studying the area of body language. Its functions and effects are widely applied in English teaching in recent years. Essential English’s author--- Eckersley once said, "One over-rigid teacher is not a good teacher." If one teacher only looks at the blackboard or elsewhere, instead of looking at his or her students, and explains in full flight, or he or she you will not pay attention to observe if his or her students understand, or whether they resonate with you, then you are not a good teacher. Teachers should be good at using body language to effectively organize classroom teaching. In the classroom, teacher is often the center of the students’ attention. Teacher's words and actions would have an impact on students. Teacher’s confident expression, gentle faces and sparkling eyes would bring the students the desire and interest of learning. On the contrary, if a teacher with a tired face, dull eyes, without expression, students’ interest in learning will be greatly reduced, and students will feel dull. At the beginning of a class, students are often in an excited state, so the teacher must begins his or her class after the students’ emotion turn to be stable. Otherwise it will not focus the attention of the students. Sometimes language can’t make them calm down, when the teachers must use calm and sincere eyes quickly to scan thewhole class, they will receive unexpected results, and students will quickly quiet down. In addition, teachers should have a potential use of body language to express their affirmation, praise, encouragement and so on. When students answer the questions, teachers should look at the students with the encouraged eyes. When the students answered the questions correctly, you can give a smile to express your praise so that the students can participate in classroom activities in full emotion. In classroom teaching, teachers should pay more attention to the cooperation of oral language, written language, and body language with each other to enhance the teaching effectiveness.2.3 The Art of DressingA good English teacher not only needs to know much more than the contents of the books, but also pays attention to other aspects of the arts such as: dignified appearance, graceful demeanor and so on. When you took on the stage, you should pay attention to the impression that you give your students. First, you should pay attention to your dress code. Whether or not you have chosen the clothes for your age and your occupation; whether or not your clothing shows your own temperament and demeanor; whether or not your clothing is dignified, generous, fit and simple. If you wear clothes decorated complex, it will only enable students to pay attention to your clothing and disperse their attention to your teaching.The rigorous style that Japanese businessmen pay attention to the appearance has a great impact in the whole Southeast Asia. For example, you must wear a tie when you are working; you must wear a suit when you see the guests; you must wear a tuxedo kind of dress to meet the request of the master when you attend a banquet. Because almost every businessman knows, paying attention to their own clothing can not only show their identity and self-cultivation, more importantly, it also expresses their respect. This will help to improve their corporate image as well as enhance the customer's trust. Therefore, the formal suit, fancy tie, bright shoes, fancy hair and clean shirt can be said the cause of half the success. Of course, as a teacher, you have no need to be so strict. But if you walked into the classroom slovenly with untidy and listlessness, your mental outlook can infect your students. So how the teachers should wear in general?In general, the teachers should have to wear clothes with a clear theme, which tells people the character of your career and tell your students your rigorous teaching style, positive andhealthy mental outlook, and your characteristics, hobbies and so on.Followed by the dress code for teachers should have an emotion. The so-called “emotion” is that the clothes you wear in the eyes of your students not only have the demeanor of the elderly, but also is amiable and approachable.Again is the dress style. The shaping of the style is closely related to the former. The type here both shows the style factors of the clothing, and expresses the inner beauty of temperament of the people who wear them. At the same time, it shows the beauty of clothing colors matching. Young female teachers’ dress code in the school shouldn’t be too fashionable. The career preference of their clothes should be elegant, dignified and simple, which is both in line with teachers’ gentle temperament, and in line with teachers’ aesthetic sensibility. The teachers who wear decent clothes will enable their students to feel amiable and approachable. If the dress colors match well, a good teaching effectiveness will be created. A good grasp of the environment and scale of the clothing and establishing a good image for your students is what every teacher should have been working for. Teachers should create the elegant clothing that appropriates to your cultural atmosphere. From the visual sense, teachers’ clothing should be dignified, decent and clean. Male teachers are advised to wear formal suits, and never try to wear any collarless or sleeveless clothes in the school. Female teachers should avoid wearing any short, backless or transparent clothes.In a word, the teachers should dress quiet, elegant and give their students good examples in the classroom rather than scatter the attention of students.2.4 The Art of Teacher’s Own BehaviorImproving the overall quality of teachers and their own self-cultivation is the primary strategy to strengthen the students’ learning motivation. Because their own quality and self-cultivation not only affect the students’ knowledge learning and intellectual development, but also affect the development of students’ non-intelligence factors, the formation of moral character and the shaping of personalities. English language is a perverted thing, so you are not able to teach to the old with an old knowledge. So English teachers should keep learning new knowledge, and apply the knowledge that you have learned to the teaching, which not only improve the interest of the class, but also enhance the contents of the knowledge and the amount of information in the classroom. Moreover, only when your overall quality isimproved, your will not go to teach badly. Furthermore, in order to understand their learning progress, an important task of teachers is to assess students’ learning. This work is indispensable because it is able to help teachers understand their own teaching effectiveness, sum up experience in teaching, improve teaching and know a clear direction for the future of teaching. Only when the teachers try to improve continuously their own overall quality, then they can have the correct assessment of the students and a very good communication with students.Education is teaching and educating people. Although neither can be neglected, educating people is more important in view of people-centered concept of modern education. Thus, the teacher is the bearer of the dual task of teaching and educating people. Then in addition to his or her professional knowledge, the more important point is the requirements as a people. Because human beings are a unity of ideology and behavior, and consciousness dominates behavior, the behavior is the performance of consciousness, so improving the moral conduct of a teacher is the foothold and starting point of the ideological and political work in the school. In the practice, we should let the teachers strive to educate, probate and affect their students with their own behavior. On the other hand, in this process our teacher will reach to the perfection with the truth, beauty and realm. Thus the students’ bringing up, teachers’ reaching to the success and self-perfection process will be completed②.The school should start with a theoretical breakthrough in the process which strengths the teachers’ education of thoughts and beliefs and improve their ideological and moral level, professional and ethical standards. It will make teachers rationally realize that their own behavior is no longer the act itself, which carries the feature of educating the next generation. And it enables teachers to strengthen their own moral self-cultivation, regulate their own behavior and improve the consciousness of their own act quality.We usually say “Example is better than precept”, which is the significance of teachers’ educating act function in the sociology. Suggestion and imitation is a pair of study categories in the sociology. Knowing and understanding the relationship between these categories is undoubtedly of great significance in improving their consciousness to strength their moral self-cultivation and pay attention to their own quality of action.2.5 The Art of Class DesigningThe artistic quality for class designing is mainly reflected in the pleasure of participating of the art. The teacher is not only the designer of the students’ participating in the activities, but also the appreciator of the students who participate in the activities. English teaching should enable students not only to get the pleasure of participating in the classroom activities the fun experience of aesthetic pleasure, but also to master the teaching content under the guidance of the teacher. A good beginning is half way to success, a good leading will open a good start for the development of the whole class. But if you want to make your English class get much more artistic influence, you must study materials in-depth, the needs of your students, and English basis of your students. Only in this way can you design the class according to your students’ needs and interests so that they feel esthetical and satisfied. At the same time the educational purpose is achieved.I remember that I conducted such a teaching dialogue. The dialogue happened between a bank clerks and his friend. They chatted about that the bank was robbed a few days ago, and after that there was still a lingering fear. If I ask two students to perform this dialogue, it is definitely not attractive. So I re-designed the dialogue and then I asked one student to perform a robber, one performed the bank staff, and another one performed an interview journalist after the incident. I asked students to give full play to their imagination and creativity. Think about what they would think about, what they would say, and what they would do if they put themselves in that kind of scenario.Because of the difference of their life experiences, characters, English basis, the contents and forms they performed were also varied. Most of the students performed very lifelike. For example, the robber was vicious, and bank staff was jittery. Referred to the plot that the bank staff fought bravely against the robber and then was sent to the hospital because of being injured, and later the journalist went to the hospital to interview, the students acted out. The students’ performance was like a comedy and their imagination was in full play. At the same time, I also got a role in the dialogue and I guided students to apply the focus and difficulties of the lesson into the performance. Students’ thinking was more active and their attention was more focused.Anyway, the dialogue is more performance-oriented by the careful design and it develops the imagination and creativity of the students. It stimulates students to participate in theteaching activities initiatively, so that the students in the whole process of teaching always keep their minds at ease and with immense interest.2.6 The Art of Multimedia AppliedMultimedia is a symbol of the information age and the "information superhighway", and it is changing the way of our working, studying, communicating and so on. The use of multimedia technology in the class teaching itself embodies the character of art. Majority of teachers capture the teaching content that rich in character of art to enrich the content of class teaching by using the multimedia technology. Click with a mouse, and the knowledge of the whole world exchange on the screen. The content is rich and informative, so teacher is “even more powerful”, students are “duck to water”⑥.So teachers must master the usage of equipment for teaching instrument skills, including the knowledge of networks, the software and hardware knowledge of computer, for example: office in word, excel, you must know how to use these most basic things, and learn to use PowerPoint to produce some courseware. Teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and keeping you’re teaching abreast the information era, so that you can be in touch with your students closer and keep closer to reality. It can be said that as a university English teacher, you must keep yourselves "recharge." It is impossible to carry on creative education to improve teaching innovation abilities, if you don't master modern educational technology. Therefore, the current trend demands that we teachers must pay attention to learning modern educational technology and computer technology, network technology, multimedia technology and other advanced educational technology, and can gradually master the computer-assisted teaching methods. Learn to make creativity multimedia courseware, take an active part in teaching reform, and make unremitting efforts to complete the task of teaching.However, the use of advanced instructional media doesn’t stand for realizing the modernization of education. The art of multimedia courseware should also be reflected in the modern educational view with the courseware design and application. In other words, teachers should motivate their students’ learning interest, improve their learning ability and develop the students’ sense of innovation with the use of modern educational concept. Therefore, the courseware can not be limited to the use of knowledge involves knowledge, but rather to uphold the "teacher-led, student-centered" role. Teachers can not use the multimediacourseware to form a new “class irrigation”. Therefore, the art of multimedia courseware should be reflected in the exploration and building of a new teaching model.The use of multimedia technology shows us a new realm of teaching: it not only displays the background according to the integrated use of text, images, sound knowledge, but also can break the constraints of time and bring the students into a virtual world, which makes the traditional teaching methods face a serious challenge. So when we use the multimedia courseware to support the teaching, we should continually explore and build a new teaching model that can achieve the combination of the group teaching and individual guidance, the combination of the knowledge teaching and teaching feedback, analysis, computer decision-making. In this way, we can truly realize individualized teaching, improve the quality of students and promote the students’ personality development, and significantly improve the teaching quality and efficiency.2.7 The Art of Psychological CounselingAs an English teacher, the teaching of knowledge is important, but meeting the students’ psychological needs is also crucial. A teacher must not only understand the level of knowledge of their students, but also grasp the psychological state of them.As the saying goes, “know the enemy, know yourself, and in every battle, you will be victorious.” The students of different ages have different psychological characteristics. For example, some students in the secondary school are at the peak of growth and development of young people, but also the “low tide period” of language expressing. Their speech is often lacking in the child's innocence, simplicity, fluency, and they can’t come up with considering precision, profundity. They are worried about that the decent words will affect their social image. And then they don’t say neck and crop to cover up their own tender. When teachers teach such a student, they should take advantage of their psychological characteristics by using appropriate means to inspire them from “ashamed” to “dare to speak”, and they will gradually become good at speeches.As an English teacher, in order to give students in the high school psychological counseling, you have to possess three preconditions followed:(1) Firstly, you want to understand the general state of mind of young people and topics that commonly interest them;(2) Secondly, you need to know the psychological environment of students in this class and topics most of them are interested in as well as some particular students with distinctive problems in psychology;(3) Thirdly, you should be prepared for giving answers to questions asked by students at any time.In terms of psychotically counseling lessons, there are two characteristics among the high school students: First, little knowledge about the psychological theory. The second one is the preference to interesting expressions.In response to this situation, you should do as follows:(1) After deciding what psychological theories you will explain, you should gather stories relevant to your subjects, such as taking examples having set among students, historical stories and anecdote to your lesson plans. It is better that a lecture outline as concise as possible can be formed with examples and cases throughout it.(2) At the end of each example or story, there should be a brief induction, which then brings the theory you want to explain. Finally, a refined conclusion is a necessity as a role of underscoring and drawing attention.(3) At the beginning and the end of the lecture, you’d better tell an appropriate and unexpected story. The story helps you attract students’ attention, arousing their interest and respect to you before you give the formal lecture. What’s more, the lecture, ending up with such a story, can present the overall problems that the students should give special attention to on your request and contribute to a deeper impression.(4) In the lectures, try your best to quote some "fashion terms" and topics students are concerned about recently. On the one hand, in this way you can draw your students’ closer creating intimacy. On the other hand, you can make students feel you understand them, thus enhancing a sense of trust.(5) Finally, in the process of lecturing, encourage students to ask questions at any time and you can answer at one time. Of course, you can also let other students answer, and then you assess them. In this way, you can create active learning atmosphere and hold students’ attention throughout the entire lecture.3. Conclusion:English teaching is not only a science, but also an art. A good English teacher should be like a good actor on stage, have to take full advantage of the characteristics of the English language itself, to play to their performing arts. A good English teacher was like a symphony orchestra conductor, she is not a performer but the person who performed the command. Therefore, with the constantly changing of the teaching environment, English teachers should improve their teaching art to adapt to the teaching objects and the teaching contents. References:1. 魏丽杰魏丽华，教师言语艺术，济南出版社，2003.52. 夏纪梅，冯芄艽．现代外语教学理念与行动[M]．北京：高等教育出版社，20063. (Czech) Comenius, Fu Rengan (translation) Great teaching theory [M].4. (Su) Suhomlinski. Arts of Education, [M]. Changsha Press5. (Su) Suhomlinski. ~ 100 Recommendations to Teacher, Hunan Education Press, 1983. [M].Tianjin People Press, 1981.6. 谢幼如，多媒体教学软件设计[M]，电子工业出版社1999年第一版。