4.Oral Practice Design

My hypothesis is that learners' interest in oral practice after class is increased by better organized activities. Moreover, my new assignment activities should have a real information value so that students have a real purpose to communicate.

I designed four activities to be tried out in four weeks. And these activities are reported as follows.

Week 1 Activity 1 Seeing the doctor
This activity is based as in Junior English for China, Book 2B,Unit 24, Lesson 95. "What do you have to do?"
Purpose: to practise using useful expressions in seeing the doctor.

Instructions: Students worked in groups. They made new dialogues by themselves after class. Then they acted out their dialogues in class.

Procedure: I taught the text of Lesson 95. Then I provided the students a lot of related material, which I classified into four aspects: Sympotom, Cause, Medicine, and Active. And I also provided some related topics and model dialogues for their reference. Next I allowed them to rehearse their dialogues for four days. At last I arranged a whole class for them to perform. When they were performing in class, three students and I gave the actors or actresses marks through disscussion. Marks were given following three standards: Firstly, their pronounciation and intonation. Secondly, their mistakes in dialogues. Thirdly, their level of preformance. After performance, I asked all of the students to elect excellent actors, actress, writers and directors.

For students: The students had to work in groups. They could act doctors, patients or other different roles. Each role had to say at least five sentences and each group had to write down their play or dialogue and hand it in.

Week 2 Activity 2 The visit to Monkey Island.
This activity is based as in Junior English for China, Book 2B, Unit 25, Lessons 97~99, "The visit to Monkey Island."

Purpose: to practise the function-Conjecture and the grammar-Infinitive.

Instructions: At first I got the individual students to retell each lesson after class. Then I got the students to act out the play in groups.

Procedure: When I finished teaching a lesson, I asked the students to retell the lesson after class. The next day I asked some students to retell the lesson in class, and then I gave some necessary advice. When I finished the three lessons, the students could retell a whole story. Then the students worked in groups after class. One of them played the part of a narrator. The others played Lucy, Jim, Kate, Bruce and Ah Fang. At last I asked three groups to give their performance in front of the class.

Week 3 Activity 3 An American boy
This activity is based as in Junior English for China, Book 2B, Unit 26, Lessons 103, "An American boy."
Purpose: to practise the method of retelling a text.

Instructions: I got the students to retell the text alone or work in groups after class, then I told everyone to retell the text in front of me.

Procedure: In class I taught the text. Then I taught them how to retell a story. I led them to find out the main words and sentences. I told them that they must retell something about who, what, when, where, how and the main ideas of the text. The students could use the new words and new patterns of the text and they could also use their own words. I let the students retell the story alone or do it in groups after class. The next day I gave them a model of retelling the text in class. Then I told every student to retell in front of me during the break instead of reciting the original text. After that I gave him/her a mark.

Week 4 Activity 4 How great Ling Feng!
This activity is based as in Junior English for China, Book 2B, Unit 27, Lessons 106, "A page from a student's diary."
The same as Activity 3.
(See Appendices B,C and D)