Acknowledgments
One of the greatest joys during the writing of this thesis is discussing with people who have given not just their time and attention, but their hearts and souls as well. I would like to thank the following people for their dedication and contribution, without which the path to the finishing line would have been a whole lot more bumpy.
My profound gratitude first goes to Mrs. Liao Jing, my supervisor, who has generously shared his inspirational and provocative ideas during many of our face-to-face discussion sessions. I would like to express my sincere thanks for her great help with my paper. Her great devotion to research has dramatically influenced me on my attitude towards future study and life.
Besides, I am also grateful to all students in Shanghai Institute of Technology who have got involved in my research of warming-up activities.
Special thanks should go to my friends and classmates for their valuable suggestions and selfless support when I had problems during my thesis writing.
Abstract
In English teaching, in order to attract the students’ interest, to stimulate their minds and to arouse enthusiasm of the students to participate, teachers usually design and utilize some teaching activities before classes, which are called "warming-up". "Warming-up" can efficiently wake up the original background knowledge of the students, stimulate their interest of the topic and explore the motivation of their learning. Constructivism plays an important guiding role in the theory and practice of English teaching. Under the guidance of this theory, the present paper analyses the current situation of teaching practice of English intensive reading coourse and proposes a detailed teaching mode, Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT). TBLT arouses students’ reading interest, improves their reading ability, enhances their learning autonomy and helps to establish the student-centered and teacher-guided class. In addition, the present paper further proves the function of constructivism on teaching and testifies the applicability of the TBLT approaches. If an English teacher can design the warming-up activities according to this theory, he or she can fully arouse the students’ enthusiasm to study English in a short time and can lead the students to cooperate effectively with the teacher to finish the task in this period. The paper would be pided into five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to warming-up activities. Chapter two is the study on the theoretical framework of the present research: constructivism and task-based language teaching (TBLT). Chapter three focuses on the application of TBLT in warming-up activities in Intensive Reading Course for English majors, which is followed by Chapter four, a case study, carried out in SIT for English majors to provide authentic materials to support the arguments in Chapter three. Chapter five is the conclusion.
Key Words: Warming-up, Constructivism, Task-based Language Teaching
摘要
在英语教学中，为了吸引学生的兴趣，激发他们的思想和热情参与教学，教师通常设计和运用一些教学活动，这些活动被称为“热身活动”。 “热身活动”可以有效地唤醒学生的已有的背景知识，激发他们对课题的兴趣和学习的动机。建构主义的理论在英语教学实践中起着重要的指导作用。在这个理论的指导下，本文分析了英语精读教学的现状，并提出了任务型教学法（TBLT）。TBLT可以激发学生的阅读兴趣，提高他们的阅读能力，加强他们的学习自主性，并有助于建立教师指导下的以学生为中心的课堂。此外，本文进一步证明了建构主义教学的作用，检验了任务型教学法的适用性。如果英语老师可以根据这一理论设计“热身”活动，就可以在短时间充分激发学生的学习热情，引导学生在课堂时间内配合老师来完成教学任务。整个论文分五章。第一章简要介绍热身活动。第二章是研究的理论框架，分别介绍了建构主义和任务型教学法。第三章着重介绍了在英语专业学生的英语精读课堂中，任务型教学法在热身活动中的应用。紧接着的第四章是一个个案研究，这个个案研究针对上海应用技术学院英语专业的学生展开，来为第三章的论点提供可靠的论据。第五章是研究的结论。8005 热身活动在英语精读课堂教学中的应用基于建构主义学习理论:http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_6179.html