Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Though some English teachers use situationalteaching, they can't design and use situations effectively.Although many schools in the big cities use multi-media to teach English, such asInternet, PPT, and video, the teachers mainly focus on books and teaching materials. Theteaching equipment of some other schools is old, the students lack real Englishenvironment, except for class English learning. Practical English applicationenvironment can rarely be found. Role-play is one of the most important ways to learnEnglish in middle schools. Without material objects and images, only the students whotake part in activity can entered the situation, but other students act as audience. Eventhough the teaching methods were changed many times，from translation method to aural-speaking method, English teaching methods used by the teachers in middle schools in ourcountry are obsolete. The teachers who teach language as knowledge focuses on students'understanding of texts, vocabulary mastery and use of language points, this method is notconducive to the students* communication abilities, in which students are indoctrinated toreceive the knowledge passively. The atmosphere in classroom can be very depressing. Asa result, they lose interest and their emotion attitude, thinking, initiation are all suppressed.
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1.2 The Purpose of the Research
The teachingquality in turn will be efficient. At English classes, teachers should try to create Englishatmosphere and situations to stimulate their students' desire of expressing ideas byassigning tasks such as role-play, simulation, games and competition, and model dialogues,multimedia and so on and by using body language. Watching videos or listening to taperecording may also help.Through experiencing teaching, talking with many teachers about the teachingmethod and reviewing many documents, the present author finds that most middle schoolteachers still use traditional "spoon-feeding"' teaching method, that is, teacher controls theclass, and they pay attention to explaining language points, the school records, vocabularymastery and the ratio of students entering higher schools. Under this teaching method, thestudents lack opportunities to speak English. Instead, they receive the knowledge passivelywithout real interest and motivation. There are few language environments or situations inEnglish class. The students cultivated by this teaching method can only do exercise andalmost can't use English in real life. This teaching method hinders the development ofstudents' comprehensive ability. Language acquisition only occurs successfully in fulllanguage environment. That's why the new curriculum requires teachers to adopt effectiveteaching methods to let students receive knowledge positively. How to implement the newEnglish curriculum better in the middle school English teaching? Creating reasonable andauthentic situations to improve the students' integrated language skills can be an effectiveway.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 The Definition of Situational Teaching Method
Thismethod focuses on situations, based on the entirety and cultivates students' ability oflistening and speaking by utilizing the audio-video means.It can be dated back to the 1920s. Linguists Harold Palmer and A.S. Hornby were themost prominent figures. They summarized the experiences of the past teaching methods,did the effective researches in language and finally set up a complete set of theoreticprinciple of teaching. It has the following features: in the process of language teaching,listening and speaking skills being priorities, followed by reading and writing skills;applying foreign language to teaching foreign language; educing the language pointsthrough the situations; learning vocabularies through practice. Some experts and scholarsdo research on situational teaching method in different fields. For instance, Li Jingsong(2007) did the research on multimedia assisted situational teaching. He referred thatmultimedia assisted situational teaching can develop students' English level as well asinspire learning motivation, activity and creativity. Therefore, it can have good effect onteaching. Some experts did the research in linguistics. Wen Jialing (2008) pointed outstructuralism linguistics emphasizes the research of sentence pattern. The most importantthing of language learning was to leam language composition and the order of thecomposition. Situational teaching method regarded language as one structure or a regularsystem. This method was affected by structuralism deeply. Therefore, teaching contentsmust be arranged from easy grammar constructions and sentences to more complicatedtheory. From her analysis, we leam teachers should pay more attention to the order ofteaching from easy to complicated aspects, from words to whole text, and the words andsentence patterns that are taught serve for the whole text. It provided a model for teaching.
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2.2 The Background of Situational Teaching Method
The Direct Method was developed in France and Germany around late 19th century.This advocated that second language learning should take into account what was known offirst language learning. The focus should be on the spoken language and only the languagebeing learned should be used in the class (Marianne: 1991).The content of teaching shiftedto the everyday vocabulary and sentences，and emphasis was on speaking and listening.Accuracy is also emphasized but it is on pronunciation as well as on grammar. Grammarwas taught inductively rather than deductively. It is fond of a habit-formation formula andgives priority to spoken language and phonetic knowledge. It neglected the part played bythe mother tongue and it overlooked the role of grammar and puts stress on mechanicalimitation and memorization, which led to the phenomenon of mechanical memorizingwithout seeking thorough understanding. The situational method is also called audio-visual method. Deriving fromaudio-lingual method and direct method, this method was first developed in France in the1950s. It was elaborated by Peter Guberina，at the University of Zagreb, and Paul Rivenc atthe Ecole Normale Sup de saint-Cloud. They thought when people use a language tocommunicate with others; the concrete situation decides the way, the rhythm and tone. Italso keeps the memory longer by using eyes, ears and brains to recognize language.Language was regarded as purposeful activity related to goals and situations in the realworld. In correspondence with these views of language, this method emphasized theprovision of situations in the presentation of a new structure and in dealing with theintegration of vocabulary work (Li Jiqing, 2000).
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Chapter Three Methodology........ 20
3.1 Research Questions........ 20
3.2 Research Subjects........ 20
3.3 Research Instruments........ 20
3.4 Research Procedures........ 21
Chapter Four Results and Data Analysis........ 29
4.1 Result Analysis of the Tests........ 29
4.1.1 Data Analysis of the Pre-test........ 29
4.1.2 Data Analysis of the Post-test........ 30
4.2 Result Analysis of the Questionnaires........ 32
4.2.1 Data Analysis of the Pre-questionnaire........ 32
4.2.2 Data Analysis of the Post-questionnaire........ 33
4.2.3 Comparison between the Two Classes........ 34
Chapter Five Findings and Discussion........ 37
5.1 Findings ........37
5.2 Suggestions for Creating Situation in No.l Middle........ 38
5.3 Limitation of the study ........43
Chapter Five Findings and Discussion
5.1 Findings
InChina, the big problem of English teaching is lacking of the real-life language environment.Because of it and the unenlightened teaching methods，many students feel boring and lostthe interest in the English learning. Their English belongs to "dumb English". According tothe situational teaching method, teachers apply different modem teaching tools(multimedia, VCD, DVD and so on) to create the language environment. It makes studentsfeel the stimulation of English from all aspects, possess passion to apply English, and thenincrease the opportunities of applying English. Students can hear and watch how tocommunicate (eg. giving direction, expressing views，giving suggestions，making andresponding to the apology) in the real life. From the real and dynamic pictures，studentscan see the expressions on people’ faces, body language, raiment. It can improve studentsmaster the knowledge of English, especially many problems which are difficult to expressin words. Such as the culture differences, the significance of the abstract words. By dint ofpictures，students can be clear at a glance.
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Conclusion
This thesis represents the present situation of English teaching at high schools andthe Basic Requirement for the students. Most English teachers in senior middle school arestill applying some traditional teaching methods. As we know，traditional teaching methodcan not arouse students，learning interest and motivation in English classes. Based on theabove problem, the author depicts the applications of the situational teaching method inEnglish classroom teaching No.l Middle School of Bayannaoer City.In order to make the research clear, the author first made a survey by a questionnaireresearching students' interest of English learning. The author made a pre-test to teststudents' English level in No.l Middle School of Bayannaoer City, where the authorworked. Based on the data collected, the author chose two classes in No.l Middle Schoolof Bayannaoer City randomly, one being the experimental class and the other control classto carry out the situational teaching experiments. Analyzing with SPSS, the author foundout that the experimental class taught in situational teaching method improved a lot. Theaverage score of the experimental class in the test had a little raise. The research shows thatthe situational teaching method plays an active part in promoting students' interest inEnglish learning. Therefore, conclusion is reached that the situational teaching method issuitable for the English teaching in No.l Middle School of Bayannaoer City, and it canmake English teaching more efficient and effective.
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