| A good beginning is half done.Lead-in is an important part of classroom instruction.According to the Input Theory and Affect Filter Hypothesis,it can be seen that teachers’ design of lead-in and the selection of the lead-in content not only play an important role in paving the way for students’ writing,but also enable students to build self-confidence in writing.Based on the Schema Theory,teachers could inspire students’ thinking during the lead-in process by activating the students’ existing schemas or providing new schemas for them.The New Curriculum Standards emphasizes the importance of cultivating students’ practical language skills and puts forward higher requirements for their writing skills.Meanwhile,the New Curriculum Standards stresses that teachers are supposed to cultivate students’ interest in classroom teaching.However,for a long time,writing has been a relatively week part in senior high school English teaching.Therefore,a study of the lead-in in senior high school English writing class is of great necessity.The present research expounds the definitions of lead-in,introduces its functions and the related researches at home and abroad,and analyzes the problems with the implement of lead-in in English writing classroom teaching.The research focuses on the following three issues: 1)What are the major methods adopted and the major content for lead-in in English writing class? 2)What are the main factors influencing teacher’s design of lead-in? 3)What are the existing problems with lead-in and what are the strategies to solve these problems? Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in the analysis.The author takes the Middle School Attached to Sichuan Normal University as the research base.A total of 6 English teachers are observed with particular attention in the following aspects: learn the major methods adopted for lead-in,the main content for lead-in as well as the time allocation for lead-in in English writing class.During interviews with six teachers,major factors influencing their design of lead-in are discussed.Besides questionnaires are handed out to 18 teachers and one 196 students,aiming to investigate how teachers’ and students’ understand of lead-in and their attitudes towards lead-in and the existing problems.The research results are as follows.To begin with,multimedia is the major technological device adopted for lead-in in classroom writing teaching and the major types for lead-in includes daily-topic lead-in,question-asked lead-in and review lead-in.Moreover,the main content of lead-in in English writing class covers background knowledge,vocabulary and sentence patterns,writing tasks and requirements related to writing topics and tasks.Data analysis indicates that the factors influencing teacher’s design of lead-in in writing class are the student’s cognitive level,interests,needs and learning styles,as well as the teaching content and goals etc.As for the major problems with lead-in,some teachers’ lead-in methods are fixed and are in lack of diversity.Besides,teacher’s ability for controlling the time allocation for lead-in is insufficient and some teachers lack knowledge on relevant theoretical knowledge and practical methods for operation.Some classes even have no lead-in part.What’s more,in conducting a lead-in,some teachers fail to reflect student-centeredness and some teachers fail to consider the actual needs of students and ignores to initiate students’ subjective motive.The present research gains some implications.Firstly,teachers should strengthen their knowledge of the theory and method related to lead-in.Secondly,teachers ought to reasonably arrange the time for lead-in for students to effectively accomplish the writing task.Thirdly,lead-in should be student-centered,which helps stimulate student’s writing interest and activate their existing knowledge schemas,to construct new knowledge.Furthermore,the novelty of lead-in should be improved. |
