【正文】
At the practice stage of a grammar lesson, the teacher designs an activity with multiple choice questions to practise the grammatical items the students learned. Problem: The activity does not practice the grammar but test it. Multiple choice questions are not suitable for the practice of grammar 7 structures. Solution: Multiple choice questions can be used at the evaluation stage. For the practice stage, the teacher can design some mechanical practice. He can also design some semicontrolled activities, or activities involving real munication. It all depends on what kind of grammatical items are practiced. 8. At the production stage of a speaking lesson, the teacher divides the students into 6 groups to do the discussion. And then the teacher retreats to a corner of the classroom to prepare for the next activity. Problem: The role of the teacher in this activity is not appropriate as there is too little involvement of the teacher. Solution: In this activity, the teacher should assume the role of designer, manager, prompter, assessor and also a source of help. While the students are working in groups, the teacher should be with the students to monitor the process and offer help when needed. 9. In an oral class, a teacher asks students to answer questions. To ensure smooth progress of his lesson, he always asks the excellent students to answer questions. Problem: This kind of approach is not helpful for student participation. According to the acquisition theory, only when there is enough participation, especially participation in productive activities, on the part of the learners can acquisition take place. If the teacher always flies with the excellent students, neglecting the poor ones, the poor students will have no chance to participate and by and by they will have no more interest and will withdraw pletely from learning. Solution: The teacher can adopt some strategies to ensure equal nomination of students. He can also direct different questions to different students. If the excellent students put up their hands too often, he can wait until no other students volunteer before he nominates the good students. 10. In a reading lesson, at the whilereading stage, the teacher assigns some skimming tasks, but some students are consulting their dictionaries for new words and expressions. The teacher notices all this but pretends not to see. Problem: As it is a skimming task, the purpose is to train reading strategies, not understanding of individual words. There is no need to consult the dictionary for individual words in order to get the main idea of a material. If the words are important for understanding, the teacher can encourage the students to guess from the context. Solution: The teacher should encourage the students to learn to guess the meanings of new words from contextual clues. Strategies of dealing with new words should be introduced to students. The teacher should demonstrate how to skim and tell them what they should do when they meet new words. If it’s mon among students to look up new words in dictionaries, the teacher can ask the students to explain why they have to consult dictionaries. It is necessary for the students to understand teachers’ instruction and know when to do what. V. Essay questions Directions: write an essay according to the following requirement 1. What are the major views of language? What are their implications to language teaching or learning? 2. Some language teachers argue that we should “teach the language” rather than “teach about the language”. What are the major differences between these two approaches to language teaching? 3. What are the characteristics of spoken language? Discuss their implications to teaching. 4. What is the main idea of the process approach to writing? 5. Problems in reading are often seen as a failure to recognize words that may not exist in the learner’s vocabulary or in understanding grammatical structures that may not have been acquired by the learner. Therefore, the task of teaching reading is seen as teaching vocabulary along with the grammatical structure of the target language. Do you agree with such an opinion? Explain your reasons. 6. In teaching reading, teachers often engage students in prereading, whilereading and postreading activities. What do you think are the major functions of prereading activities? 7. Grammar presentation methods