An Investigation On Listening And Speaking Instructional Design In Senior High School From The Perspective Of The Activity-Based Approach

The Activity-based Approach is a relatively new concept put forward by General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards（2017）.It has strong guiding significance with its specific path for teachers to better cultivate students’ core competencies.Therefore,investigating teachers’ understanding and practice of the Activity-based Approach is of great significance,which can promote teachers’ implementation of it and deepen the curriculum reform.This paper aims to investigate senior high school English teachers’ understandings of the Activity-based Approach as well as their practice in listening and speaking teaching.It also tries to explore the influencing factors that affect the implementation of the Activity-based Approach.This study investigates 70 teachers via questionnaire,3 teachers through classroom observations and interviews,on their listening and speaking teaching in Linyi,Shandong Province to solve the following three questions:1.What is the current situation of teachers’ understandings of the Activity-based Approach?2.What is the current situation of implementing the Activity-based Approach in listening and speaking classes?3.What are the influencing factors that affect the implementation of the Activity-based Approach ?The main findings are as follows.First of all,there are great differences in senior high school English teachers’ understandings of the Activity-based Approach.Some teachers have a systematic understanding,whereas some teachers have not even heard of it.What’s more,different teachers interpret the Activity-based Approach from different focal points,such as relevance and coherence of three levels activities,the participation of students,and the practical effects as well as potential problems of the Activity-based Approach.For the implementation,teachers can set teaching objectives from core competencies while they often ignore cultural awareness.Secondly,teachers fully realize the importance of thematic meaning and design related activities based on themes of texts.And finally most teachers can effectively practice learning and understanding activities in listening and speaking teaching,but the implementation of applying and practicing activities as well as transferring and creating activities is not optimistic.Finally,influencing factors of the implementation of the Activity-based Approach are teachers’ own efforts,school’s keen environment and educational experts’ support.