A Study on the Effects of Class Rewards in Primary School English Learning Abstract English plays increasingly crucial role in society and the tendency of learners are younger and younger. While owing to the lack of environment, English is hard for the young to acquire it. Moreover, quality- oriented teaching are advocated wildly by increasingly scholars and teachers. “Duck-stuffing” and high pressure type of teaching are no longer suitable for learners, more humanistic methods have been raised to stimulate and maintain inpidual’s confidence, interests and motivation of leaning. How to encourage students to learn independently and willingly has been the heated topic to be discussed. What is more, taking pupils’ certain psychological and perception characteristics into consideration, their attention can only sustain for a short time. At that time, maintaining their attention and interests in classes is emergency. Teachers try to borrow the idea from second language acquisition (SLA) to make the teaching more efficient. Especially, rewards are used as routine in English classes, which is an efficient way to catch students’ attention and stimulate their interests. However, rewards-giving as an extrinsic motivation has its shortage that too much rewards-giving may distract learners attention and ruin their intrinsic motivation. The research intends to observe the English classes by collecting the data from the observed class, interviewing teachers and making surveys to pupils to make clear the relation between the various rewards, pupils’ behaviors and the results(the grades). During the research, the rewards-giving types, moments and frequency were paid attention to. The results of rewards-giving methods in English classes partly from the analysis from the correlation between the rewards-giving frequency and pupils’ grades and partly from whether pupils’ intrinsic motivations were ruined or not.47826
Key words: English class’ rewards; intrinsic motivation; learners’ perception and psychological characteristics; SLA
课堂奖励机制对于小学生英语学习的影响
摘 要在当今社会英语变得越来越重要,英语学习者也日趋低龄化。但是由于缺少语言使用环境,对于年幼的英语学习者而言,英语是很难掌握的。现在越来越多的学者和老师在提倡素质教育理念,填鸭式和高压教学理念显然已经不适应学习者,更多更具人文色彩的学习方法开始被研究来激发和保持学生自信、动机和兴趣方式。如何让孩子们更加自主的学习成为热议的话题。而且,考虑到年幼学习者的心理和认知特点,他们的注意力只能持续一小段时间。因此,对于他们而言,如何保持他们对于英语课堂的兴趣和注意力是首先需要被考虑的。老师们尝试借鉴二语习得的研究成果来提高他们的教学效率。课堂奖励是一种很有效能激发和抓住学生兴趣动机的方式。然而奖励作为一种鼓励学生的外在动机有其一定的弊病,过多的或者不恰当的奖励会分散学生的注意力并且损害学生的内部动机。因此如何恰到好处的使用奖励是值得商榷的。本论文通过课堂观察,搜集观察课堂相关数据以及采访相应学生和老师的方式,明确不同奖励,学生行为和结果(通常以成绩方式呈现)。研究结果部分来自于奖励频率和学生成绩的相关性研究,部分来自于分析学生内在动机被损伤与否。
毕业论文关键词: 小学生英语课堂奖励; 内在动机; 学习者认知与心理特点; 二语习得
Contents
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Background of the study 1
1.2 Research questions 1
1.3 The significance of the study 1
2. Literature Review