How to determine the goal of English teaching in primary schools

Zhang Jinxiu (Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Beijing Institute of Education)

First, the definition of teaching objectives and its role in teaching design

From the level of teaching objectives, teaching objectives can be divided into three levels: macro (that is, school education objectives), medium (curriculum objectives) and micro (unit or class objectives). For teachers, our main concern is the micro-teaching objectives, that is, the determination and expression of teaching objectives in units and classes. From the perspective of international education research, teaching objectives can be divided into three categories: behavioral objectives, generative objectives and expressive objectives. The research and practice of teaching objectives in China is deeply influenced by the goal model of famous American curriculum scholars Taylor and Gagne, and has always been centered on behavioral goals. Under the behavioral goal system, the goal of microteaching is defined as "the teaching goal is the degree that students expect to achieve after completing their learning tasks, and the expected teaching results are the basic starting point for organizing, designing, implementing and evaluating teaching." In other words, before starting any teaching, designers must be able to answer this question: "After teaching, can learners do things they haven't done before?" Or "What will happen to learners after teaching?" . The role of teaching objectives in classroom teaching is to guide learning, that is, to determine the teaching content, teaching difficulties and students' original learning foundation, and to guide students to participate in the teaching process independently and actively; Guide teaching, determine the teaching steps, links and activities of teachers, and reduce the randomness of teaching; The guiding evaluation, that is, the goal provides the standard and basis for the evaluation.

Second, the gratifying changes in the practical expression and formulation of teaching objectives

(A) the target subject from teachers to students.

The traditional goal of English teaching is often expressed as "let students master the following new words …" or "make students understand listening materials", which is based on teachers' teaching. Under the guidance of the "student-centered" teaching concept of the new curriculum standard, the expression subject of teaching objectives has changed to the description of students' learning behavior, such as "By the end of this class, students can/will be able to do it ……", which reflects the shift of teachers' teaching center, that is, from paying attention to their own teaching effect to paying attention to students' learning effect, and provides the direction and basis for the later teaching process design and evaluation design.

(2) The target dimension is from double base to multi-dimension.

Traditional English teaching goals attach importance to "double basics", and the goal determination and expression only include language knowledge and language skills, especially vocabulary and grammar goals in language knowledge goals. As a result, students mechanically recite a lot of vocabulary and grammar rules, but they can't use them in real situations. Since entering the new curriculum, the three-dimensional target framework or pie chart target framework of English subjects has entered the English teachers' field of vision, making classroom teaching richer, teacher-student interaction more meaningful, and students' comprehensive language application ability has been valued and developed.

(C) Action verbs from abstract to concrete

Traditional expressions of English teaching objectives often use general and abstract verbs such as "mastering" and "understanding", which makes it difficult for teachers to perceive the achievement of classroom teaching objectives. Under the influence of the new curriculum goal system, teachers begin to express their goals with concrete, detectable and multi-level behavioral verbs, such as "students can listen, recognize and speak the following vocabulary" and "students can describe the appearance and personality characteristics of others with the following sentence patterns". Under the guidance of these specific behavioral verbs, teachers can guide and monitor students' language learning process more pertinently and test students' learning effect.

The above three aspects are gratifying changes in English teaching objectives since the implementation of the new curriculum. These changes have played a very good role in helping teachers implement the new curriculum concept, constructing student-centered classroom teaching and improving the timeliness of classroom teaching. But at the same time, teachers are confused about the teaching objectives in teaching practice, which urgently needs the attention and guidance of curriculum experts and teacher trainers.

Second, the main problems in the practice of teaching objectives and their analysis and solutions

(A) teachers' understanding of teaching objectives needs to be improved.

Teachers' awareness of teaching objectives refers to the degree to which teachers attach importance to classroom teaching objectives. Teaching objectives play a guiding role in learning, teaching and evaluation (Sun Ming, 2004), so teachers should first consider determining teaching objectives when designing teaching before class. At the same time, in the whole process of classroom teaching design, we should constantly generate the achievement of teaching objectives according to the students' site, and adjust the teaching objectives as needed. In fact, the idea behind this consciousness is that teachers should focus on what to teach, how to teach, what to learn and how to learn in the design and implementation of classroom teaching, which plays an important role in improving teachers' ability to grasp teaching materials and learning situations, and their ability to drive and control the classroom.

However, in daily teaching practice, the author finds that teachers often design teaching process and activities directly according to the content of teaching materials before class, and then design teaching objectives; At the same time, in the process of classroom teaching design, teachers are more concerned about how to implement their own preset teaching links and activities as planned, so no matter how students learn, they must follow the teaching progress. If we analyze the teacher's consciousness reflected behind this phenomenon, we will find that the idea that teachers uphold in the design and implementation of classroom teaching is around the problem of "how to teach". In other words, teachers often equate the teaching content in textbooks with the teaching objectives directly, lacking a clear sense of teaching objectives.

Starting from the operating sequence of teaching design, that is, analysis of students' needs, determination of teaching objectives, determination of teaching plans and determination of learning effect evaluation plans (Zhang Jinxiu, 2008), "what to teach" is a more superior concept than "how to teach". Only by determining scientific and effective teaching objectives can we ensure that the teaching process serves the objectives and ensure efficient learning results. Therefore, teachers need to enhance their awareness of teaching objectives first.

(b) Three-dimensional or five-dimensional-the dimensional framework of the goal should reflect the characteristics of the discipline.

The outline of basic curriculum reform, a programmatic document of the country on curriculum reform, puts forward the concept of three-dimensional goals, namely knowledge and skills, process and method, emotional attitude and values. According to the characteristics of learning English as a foreign language, English curriculum experts refine the three-dimensional goals into five items: language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitudes, learning strategies and cultural awareness, and present them in the form of pie charts (Ministry of Education, 20065438+). The coexistence of the two goal systems brings some confusion to teachers. Is the design goal based on three dimensions or five plates? Teachers often listen to the opinions of schools or teachers. Therefore, according to their own understanding, the school has set the expression dimension of teaching objectives for teachers, and the results are different. Some schools require design from three dimensions: knowledge and skills, process methods, emotional attitudes and values, some schools require design from three dimensions: knowledge, ability and emotional/moral education, and some schools simply require English teachers to design teaching from knowledge, ability and other aspects ("other" schools mean writing, not not not writing). Faced with these various dimensional frameworks of teaching objectives, teachers are difficult to judge, lose the motivation and direction to analyze and grasp the objectives in depth, and simply follow the trend and write according to the requirements of the school. Rigid teaching objectives have lost their guiding role in teaching, and the objectives are divorced from the process. For example, the birthday of Unit4 Mocky in the fifth grade of Beijing Normal University has the teaching objectives set and expressed by the teacher:

Knowledge and skills objectives:

1. Can read stories according to pictures and roles.

2. Be able to listen, speak, understand and read the related words, sentence patterns, months (March, September and October) and seasons (spring and autumn) in the story correctly, and ask and answer the expressions of birthdays.

3. Be able to search useful information from the story under the guidance of the teacher, and simply retell the story according to the tips of pictures and main vocabulary.

Process and method objectives:

Through guessing riddles, dialogue between teachers and students, answering questions, sorting out pictures, filling in information cards, telling the truth and falsehood, matching pictures and texts, performing stories with narration and other activities, we can understand and learn stories from the whole to the part. In this process, it can inspire students' thinking, cultivate students' ability of preliminary analysis, acquisition and processing of information, and develop students' independent reading ability.

Emotional attitude and value goal;

Experience the happiness of story learning and keep your interest in English learning. Feel the happiness brought by friendship by understanding the content of the story, and guide students to care for their friends and family.

From this teaching goal, simply applying the three-dimensional framework is not suitable for English subjects, because the process, method and goal are often understood by teachers as the teaching process. At the same time, the framework omits the important learning strategy goals and cultural awareness goals of English subjects, and finally only implements the knowledge and skills goals.

Improvement strategy:

We should follow the characteristics of the subject and unify the dimensional framework of the expression of classroom teaching objectives in primary schools, that is, according to the requirements of English curriculum standards, we should determine and express them from five aspects: language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitude, learning strategies and cultural awareness. This is not contradictory to the three-dimensional target framework. The author thinks that the five stages of English teaching objectives are not five-dimensional objectives, but the refinement of three-dimensional objectives according to the characteristics of English as a foreign language learning discipline, such as the refinement of process and method objectives into learning strategy objectives and the differentiation of cultural awareness from knowledge and skills objectives to highlight and emphasize them, which provides a more concrete and operable framework for teachers' teaching objectives design. Of course, because the content of English teaching in primary schools is relatively simple, it is not required that every class should have these five target values at the same time, but teachers should try their best to tap the teaching target values in the teaching content according to this framework, so as to make classroom teaching more abundant and efficient. According to this framework, the author designed the following teaching objectives for the teaching case of the first class of Unit4 "Mohji's Birthday" in grade five of Beijing Normal University:

Language skills goal: students can understand short stories about birthday topics and perform stories of different roles;

Language knowledge goal: Students can preliminarily and comprehensively use the vocabulary and sentence patterns about seasons and months (spring, autumn, summer, winter, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December) (when is your birthday? My birthday is in … how old are you? I communicate with each other.

Learning strategy goal: Students can learn and memorize vocabulary about seasons and months by using network diagram.

Cultural awareness goal: let students know that in western culture, birthday gifts should be opened at that time and expressed gratitude.

Emotional attitude goal: students can know the birthday dates of other students and give English wishes when their birthdays come.

From the above statement, the core goal of English teaching in primary schools is language knowledge and language skills, and the other three goals are auxiliary goals, but they provide richer and more humanized situations and backgrounds for the realization of knowledge and skills goals, and are also very important in classroom teaching.

Third, the basis for determining the objectives of English teaching in primary schools

After the framework is determined, teachers are faced with the problem of accurately grasping and reasonably determining the content of teaching objectives. In the following, the author will combine English curriculum standards and cases, and put forward several bases for determining teaching objectives to help teachers further clarify their thinking.

(1) Analyze the teaching materials with units as the length, and determine the language knowledge and skills objectives in the classroom with units as the unit.

English textbooks for primary schools are all designed with units as the main line. Based on the consideration of primary school students' cognitive characteristics, the teaching content of each class in a unit is often relatively simple, such as a short story, a short conversation or even a few sentences. However, the textbook writers wrote these teaching contents on the basis of the overall design of the unit, with the intention of emphasizing the different emphasis of individual class hours under the overall grasp. When analyzing textbooks, teachers often only pay attention to the teaching content of a single class hour, design teaching objectives around the teaching content of a single class hour, and conduct teaching in isolation. They believe that the simple superposition of teaching objectives in a single class is the development of students' comprehensive language use ability. Such goal orientation will lead to a single teaching situation for teachers and students and boring teaching. When the author listens to the next class.

This lesson is Beijing Normal University Edition. What color is it in the second grade? Vocabulary class two in middle school. Teachers use color cards and physical cards to organize students to practice 16 red, blue and other color words in various forms. What color is it? A simple sentence pattern. When communicating with the teacher after class, the teacher said that his teaching goal based on the teaching content of this class is that students can say 16 color words. What color is used? This is a question and answer sentence about color. However, the author flipped through the textbook and found out what the sentence pattern of this unit is. They are … how many … how many? There are … sentence patterns, as well as animal words such as butterflies and bears. The author then asked the teacher, why not practice these sentence patterns and words at the same time? The teacher said that these sentence patterns and words were learned in the last class. So the author asked two top students, two middle students and two students with learning difficulties to make a simple question and answer. Results Only top students can understand the questions and answer them, among which "they" and "you" are still unfamiliar, and both middle school students and students with learning difficulties need the author to translate the questions into Chinese.

It can be seen from the above cases that students "learned" does not necessarily mean that students "learned". In other words, the teaching goal can not be achieved in a single class, but it should be continuously reproduced in the unit, even in the semester and school year, and spiral up to form students' comprehensive language use ability.

In primary school English classroom teaching, we should pay special attention to the connection between old and new knowledge, and "roll 30% of new knowledge with 70% of old knowledge" (Li Jingchun, 200 1). According to this principle, when considering the teaching objectives in the textbook, teachers should analyze the unit as a whole, consider the connection between the old and new teaching objectives, reproduce the old teaching objectives as much as possible, and help students use the language comprehensively on this basis, instead of just determining the teaching objectives around the teaching content of this lesson.

(B) according to the existing level of students to determine the appropriate language knowledge and skills goals.

The main body of teaching objectives is students, and the first thing to reflect is the changes of students' knowledge and skills before and after learning. Therefore, in addition to teaching materials, learning situation is another important basis for teachers to determine teaching objectives. To set appropriate teaching objectives, teachers must master students' current level in this respect according to the teaching objectives in the textbook, then adjust the teaching objectives in the textbook according to the learning situation, formulate reasonable and appropriate teaching objectives, and realize the principle of "i+ 1" in foreign language teaching.

In this regard, the ideal situation is that the teaching objectives in the textbook are in line with the existing level of students, and teachers can teach only by slightly adjusting the teaching objectives. But this is not the case. Due to the different teaching conditions of English in primary schools in different regions, both Grade Three and Grade One have a starting point, which leads to different difficulties in teaching materials. For example, some schools offer English from the first grade, and the textbooks used in the middle and high grades are the textbooks at the starting point of the third grade, which leads to the teaching objectives in the textbooks being significantly lower than the existing level of students. In addition, parents attach great importance to their children's English learning at this stage, and generally enroll their children in English remedial classes in society, which also leads to the children's level being higher than the teaching target level in the textbook. Such as the following teaching case (Yue Wei, 2005):

In the lesson about animals in the textbook of People's Education Edition (Unit 4, Volume 2), the teaching goal set by the teacher is: students can listen, speak, recognize and read words such as dog, monkey, duck, panda, cat, rabbit and pig; Students can understand and act like dogs/monkeys … and consolidate the words they have learned. The whole class was full of warm teaching atmosphere, constant laughter and frequent interaction between teachers and students, which left a deep impression on the participants. However, in the after-class survey, a set of data attracted the attention of the listeners. Of the 54 students in the class, 47 mastered the new teaching content before class and 52 mastered it after class. In other words, a 40-minute class only realizes the language progress and development of five students, and most of them just review their knowledge and skills. Is the efficiency of such classroom teaching too low?

English classroom teaching in primary schools like this is relatively common in areas with good educational foundation and rich educational resources. For example, in the recent excellent course evaluation activity in a certain district, the outstanding problem is that teachers don't grasp the students' learning situation enough, and the teaching objectives set are generally lower than the students' development needs.

Therefore, teachers should interview three or four students with different levels before class to understand the students' existing knowledge and skill level of this course, and expand or narrow the teaching objectives of the textbook according to their level. For example, in the above cases, on the basis of students' current level, the word toy and two or three animal words, such as bear and tortoise, can be added to the language knowledge goal. The goal of language skills can be further extended to use this is a description of animal toys. It is yellow/red.

(3) It is necessary to combine the macro and specific emotional attitude goals with the corpus, and infiltrate them explicitly or implicitly in teaching.

Emotional attitude goal is one of the important goals of English teaching in primary schools. "English Curriculum Standard" describes the second-level emotional attitude goal as follows.

1) I am interested in listening to English, speaking English, reciting ballads, singing, telling stories and playing games.

2) Be willing to imitate, dare to speak, take an active part and take the initiative to ask questions. From this point of view, cultivating students' personal interests and building self-confidence is a very important macro-discipline teaching goal in primary school English teaching. At the same time, classroom teaching also carries an important educational function, that is, the cultivation of children's values, and the best way in this respect is to determine the appropriate moral education goals in combination with corpus and naturally penetrate into classroom teaching.

In teaching practice, the author found that there are three misunderstandings in the determination and achievement of emotional attitude goals, which need to be corrected. First, teachers generally pay attention to students' collective emotional attitudes through interesting activities and multiple evaluations, but lack attention to students' individual emotional attitudes in classroom teaching. If the author sees this phenomenon in a lecture, the teacher keeps asking students to answer questions or read words and sentences at will. Once a little girl was asked to answer a question. The girl's thick nasal voice clearly showed that she had a cold, but the teacher ignored it. In the later teaching process, the girl was called twice again. Every time the teacher only cared whether she answered the question, but she always turned a blind eye to the fact that she had a cold. Obviously, the teacher ignored and lost the important opportunity of emotional communication between teachers and students. If the teacher can notice that the little girl has a cold when she asks the question for the first time, go to her and ask "Do you have a cold?" In this case, it will definitely enhance the positive attitude of the little girl towards school, teachers and learning. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers should pay attention to children's individual emotional attitudes in classroom teaching.

The second problem of emotional attitude goal is that emotional attitude goal is out of touch with corpus topic and cannot penetrate naturally. For example, in a class I heard, Unit 4, Lesson 24, Grade 6, New Edition of Primary School English by People's Education Society, we are going to the Great Wall. The emotional attitude goal set by the teacher is to cultivate students' awareness of energy conservation and environmental protection through the activity of turning off the lights for one hour in this class and the evaluation of water bottle cards. This passage is a question-and-answer dialogue about where to travel during holidays, and has nothing to do with saving energy and protecting the earth. Far-fetched emotional goals are just preaching to students, which can't achieve the effect. After analyzing the contents of the corpus, the author and the instructor set the emotional attitude goal of this class as "students can feel the tourism characteristics of different countries and have the desire to understand the world through tourism".

The third question of emotion, attitude and goal is how to achieve the goal. With people's attention to the goal of moral education, teachers usually spend the last five minutes in class to sublimate their emotions and let students discuss a topic. For example, in the above case, the teacher spent the last five minutes discussing with the students the activity of turning off the lights for one hour in the world, and organized the students to sing an English song entitled "Our World". In the interview after class, the teacher mentioned that the purpose of this activity is to achieve the emotional attitude goal of "students can improve their environmental awareness". The irrationality of this goal positioning has been analyzed and corrected, and what we should reflect here is the way to realize the emotional attitude goal. As a hidden goal in foreign language classroom, the way to achieve the goal of emotional attitude can be explicit, that is, to organize students to discuss some emotional attitude. However, this kind of activity that only serves the goal of emotional attitude should not be the main activity in English classroom teaching. The achievement of the goal of emotional attitude depends more on the hidden way, that is, teachers naturally infiltrate emotional attitude with corpus from beginning to end in a class, so that students can receive some emotional attitude through experience and empathy, and improve their emotional attitude. For example, in the above case, after the emotional attitude goal of "students can feel the tourism characteristics of different countries and have the desire to understand the world through tourism" is determined, the teacher can ask the students about their tourism experience in the lead-in session: Where did you go last winter vacation? How do you feel? Arouse students' memories of wonderful travel experiences. Secondly, in the output link, we can combine the corpus to put forward the task: they are going to the Great Wall. What about you? The May Day holiday is coming. Make a travel plan with your partner. You can go to any country you like. Let students imagine and look forward to in the process of making tourism plans, which will naturally stimulate their desire to understand the world through tourism.

(4) Try to explore the hidden learning strategies and cultural awareness goals in the text corpus of teaching materials and make them explicit.

The text corpus in primary school English textbooks can have five teaching objectives at the same time, but teachers should not ignore the learning strategy objectives and cultural awareness objectives in teaching. Learning strategies can improve students' English learning effect, help students form autonomous learning ability and realize personalized learning (Cheng, 2003). At the same time, language and culture are inseparable, and language has rich cultural connotations (Ministry of Education, 2002). Therefore, teachers should try their best to explore the hidden learning strategies and cultural awareness goals in the text corpus of teaching materials and make them explicit.

For example, my father is a teacher, and the Protestant words in the textbook are fireman, policeman and policewoman. From the analysis of the target value of learning strategies, these three words are all compound words. Teachers can set the learning strategy goal of this lesson as a preliminary perception of word formation methods of compound words, and cultivate students' awareness and ability to guess according to word formation when they encounter similar word forms in the future. However, the author finds that teachers who design teaching objectives from the perspective of three-dimensional objectives only treat these three words as new words in isolation, and do not provide students with an opportunity to acquire learning strategies.

One of the reasons for teachers' lack of awareness of learning strategies is that they have not received corresponding training on learning strategies and lack knowledge of learning strategies, so they lack the ability to guide students' learning strategies. It is suggested to strengthen the cultivation of teachers' knowledge and ability in teacher training and teaching and research activities.

In primary school English teaching, not every class can have cultural awareness goals, but texts with outstanding cultural awareness characteristics can be designed with cultural awareness goals. For example, in the teaching of "Happy Day" in the fourth class of Unit 9, Grade 4, Primary School English of Beijing Normal University, the teaching content is a short article about Ken and Ann's weekend life. According to this corpus, we can set the goal of cultural awareness, understand the similarities and differences between Chinese and western children's weekend life, and broaden their horizons.

To sum up, teachers must study teaching materials and students on the basis of understanding the connotation and importance of teaching objectives, formulate reasonable and appropriate classroom teaching objectives, and promote students' learning and development.

Fourth, the expression of teaching objectives

(A) ABCD principle

An object (audience)-specify the teaching object.

B behavior-what should learners do after learning?

C condition-under what conditions did the above behavior occur?

D degree-the standard and degree that specifies whether the above-mentioned behaviors are qualified.

Example: Beijing Normal University Edition Grade Four Volume I U 1, L3

Through dialogue learning, students can understand simple language materials about careers and can simply ask and answer simple questions about careers.

(B) Smart principle

special

mensurable

compassable

realistic

opportunity

(C) the principle of verb diversification

Knowledge goal:

Speak, spell, read correctly, know, understand, be familiar with, learn to use, use, understand and comprehend, express and master.

Skill objectives:

Tell, read aloud, repeat, recite, describe, acquire, write, understand, perform, sing and communicate.

Emotional attitudes and values:

Love, happiness, desire, respect, love, cherish, cultivate, dare, distinguish and appreciate.

(D) Statement of teaching objectives for reference

Unit 4, Grade Four, Beijing Normal University Edition L 1

Main tasks: Students can read aloud or perform emotional stories according to pictures.

1. Students can initially perceive and understand short stories about the orientation of objects;

2. Students can understand and say the following words: in, on, under, behind, front, nut, squirrel, ground；; Where is it? This is ...;

3. Students can remember words through picture association;

4. Students can understand that nuts include many dried fruits;

5. Students can positively evaluate the help of others and have the consciousness of actively helping others.