Chapter One Introduction
To arouse the enthusiasm of students' study, the new curriculum reform emphasizes that let students become the master of the class, which can finally promote the improvement of students' comprehensive quality. As for junior high school English class, the most important is to create security in English class to enable junior high school students to enjoy the class with a best state of learning. Therefore, the study of creating security in junior high school English class is an important prerequisite of new curriculum successful reform, students' efficient learning of English and English teachers' efficient teaching. This article will study the present deficient situation of sense of security in junior high school English class and the primary reasons for it. And after searching a large number of information, I will try to provide some practical strategies for creating students’ security in junior high school English class.
Chapter Two Theoretical Basis
2.1 Security
Security is an important concept of psychology. It first appeared in the study of Sigmund Freud psychoanalysis, that is security is a premonition of the possible danger or risk of physical or mental feeling, as well as individual’s sense of power or powerlessness of dealing with the disposal. The Dictionary of Psychology defines the security as “the emotions individual experiences in getting rid of situation with threat or protection which are indispensable factors to sustain the individual's survival and development, which manifest themselves in ways such as the feeling of being eager to get security and stability, desire to be protected, and avoid the anxiety and fear, etc.” According to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, security is the degree of resistance to, or protection from, harm, which is a basic entitlement guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
2.2 Junior High School Students' Security in English Class
Students' security, as the name implies, is students' abstract mental reaction to the class atmosphere, which is a normal and natural psychological need for every student in the class. “When the class can ensure that students don’t have the feeling of loneliness, anxiety and fear, such a class can be seem as a secure class (Wang Xiaochun, 2010, p.75)”. Only when their psychological needs are constantly satisfied, may students participate in teaching activities with joy and interest. Students' security in junior high school English class refers to a kind of psychological feeling and emotional experience that junior high school students hold in the English class, which can be mainly showed in the form of the elimination of students' fear and anxiety in English class, students' acceptance of teachers' teaching and management, students' high enthusiasm in the class participation, a harmonious relation with English teacher and other students, students' confidence of their own learning ability of English, etc. Among such a particular environment like junior high school English class, the psychological change of students in junior high school who are in puberty is so subtle that students' problems of security are particularly easy to be ignored by English teachers.
Chapter Three Current Situation of Junior High School Students' Security in English Class
3.1 Questionnaire
The questions in Questionnaire are made up of three parts: students' personal information, students’ studies about English and their comments on their English teachers.
My respondents are students in my practice school, Lianyungang XinHai Experimental high School. With the help of my practice instructor, I selected 6 classes, 3 in Grade 7 and 3 Grade 8, 317 junior high school students in total to finish my questionnaire. I took back 309 questionnaires with a returning rate of 97.37%. Except some incomplete ones, the surplus valid questionnaires were 396 with an effective rate of 94.74%.
3.2 Representation of Junior High School Students' Lack of Security in English Class
Students in junior high school are generally lacking in security due to various reasons. Especially when they are facing the study of a second language, English, in the class, their uneasy and insecure feeling may be more obvious. American teacher Rafe Esquith wrote in his book Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire: the methods and madness inside Room 56 (Rafe Esquith, 2007, p.4): "Most of the class are controlled by a kind of thing, which is ‘fear'." That's true. It is common for students in junior high school to experience insecurity in their English class, which mainly includes three aspects: excessive anxiety and fear, rebellious behaviors and loneliness in English class.
3.2.1 Excessive Anxiety and Fear
The relation between anxiety and learning effects is similar to the one between learning motivation and learning efficiency, the Yerks_Dodson Law. The two relations are both like “inverted U curve”: a certain degree of anxiety can improve learning efficiency, but excessive anxiety can cause various negative problems, and eventually lead to the result of students' lower learning efficiency. Fear in English class is also a kind experience of extreme insecurity. A great majority of the students in junior high school are showing a nameless sense of fear in English class. During my internship, I found some junior high school students' heart-rate may quicken obviously in English class when they can't express themselves smoothly in English, sometimes with facial redness, sometimes with incoherent speech. In this case, if the teacher cannot help them to adjust their attitudes in time, such a gray experience may create a great negative impact on these students, which may lasts for a long time or even a lifetime. Therefore English teachers should pay special attention to such kind of students in the practical teaching, and learn to guide these students scientifically to develop a normal level of anxiety and eliminate their own fear, so as to improve students' English learning efficiency.
3.2.2 Rebellious Behaviors
As is known to all, students in junior high school who are getting into puberty are in a special period of unbalanced development of body and mind, so there are different levels of rebellious psychological tendency inside their hearts to the outer world things, which represents in some aspects in junior high school English class, such as trying their best to do against their English teachers, deliberately making some behaviors contrary to English teachers' requirements, interfering with the teacher intentionally to disrupt the class and even bullying other students. So in the class, when facing such students in puberty, teachers should be more flexible to give full play to their own education wit to help students find security in junior high school English class with scientific guidance.
3.2.3 Loneliness
Students who feel lonely and bored in English class are most easily ignored by the teachers, because in most cases, they don't disrupt class order and do not do against their English teacher, but they rarely communicate with others in the class. It is easy for English teachers to read these students' indifference to the class from their faces. As for them, the class is not safe. In the class, they just seem to be bystanders who do not care about the content that they are learning or teaching activities which need their participation. English teachers cannot feel their existence; similarly they cannot feel teachers' and classmates' needs for them. As time passes, such kind of students' loneliness may be greater for this way, which can make students feel bored and insecure, and gradually lose interest in English learning, as well as their school lives! So English teacher should try their best to let each student become the master of the class and pay great attention to arousing all students' enthusiasm to participate in the class, rather than letting these students act as spectators who seem to have nothing to do in the class.
3.3 Analysis of Reasons for Junior High School Students’ Lack of Security in English Class
Nowadays, many English teachers in junior high school have found that their hardworking teaching is always unable to arouse students' learning interest and enthusiasm efficiently. The teaching atmosphere is also depressing, which lacks animation through whole English class, so are students. In my opinion, one of the great important reasons for these phenomena is that students lack the most basic security to participate in the teaching activities in their English class. And there are following three reasons leading to such result.
3.3.1 Harms from High Learning Pressure
Students' high pressure is one of the persistent ailments in the primary and secondary education in China that does not heal for a long time. In recent years, though the work of lightening the burden on students is continuous, the effect which has been achieved is little. Under the high pressure from examination and entrance, students in junior high school are forced to face excessive burden of learning every day and struggle to cope with frequent exams and a lot of exercises. They are seriously lack of learning enthusiasm and interest. They have been suppressed by a pair of invisible hands, which let them can't breathe. As for them, the class has become the most insecure place. Students' psychological pressure is so heavy; the quantity of homework is so giant; the number of after-school courses is so big; the time for rest and entertainment is so little; and their physical and mental state is so poor. All of these are really worrying. Numerous studies have shown that students' high burden from schoolwork has seriously hindered the implementation of quality education, which not only leads to students' serious shortage of sleep and poorer physical quality, but also affects the healthy development of junior high school students' mental seriously. It may well be asked, students even lack of the most basic psychological security, how could they concentrate on the English class to accept knowledge?
3.3.2 Hidden Troubles in Students' Campus Social Lives
Because teachers and students are the most active factors in the teaching process, the relations between teachers and students and between students and students have become the most basic and most important interpersonal relationships. Students in junior high school are entering into adolescence, whose self-awareness is high unprecedentedly, so it is no doubt that the relationship with surrounding classmates has a significant impact on their physical and psychological development. Some related researches show that when individual cognizes their negative relation with other students, they are more likely to bully others or be bullied by others, so finally they become seriously lack of security no matter in the class or after class. Researches also show that a harmonious relationship between students can efficiently reduce the conflicts between students. Connecting to practical English class in junior high school, students preferring a variety of activities to rigid teaching process, inharmonious relationship between students may become the main factor to hinder the common teaching activities.
The relationship between teachers and students is another important interpersonal relationship in teaching process, which also, harmonious or inharmonious, directly affects students' physical and psychological development. There are three main types of the relationship we know between teachers and students: autocratic relationship, laissez-faire relationship and democratic relationship. Though quality education is always promoting democracy in teaching process, actually in the practical teaching, the relationship between teachers and students are more authoritarian and laissez-faire. Teachers with authoritarian don't want to listen to the students' will, which cause students' revulsion and even resistance, and finally cause serious insecurity in the class. While teachers with laissez-faire always lack responsibility, which may lead student to take a skeptical attitude to their teacher's teaching ability with disappointment. With the increase of entrance pressure, teachers tend to spare more attention to students with good grades. “To care each child's all-round development” from new curriculum reform remains an empty slogan. Nowadays most junior high school students cannot feel the care from their teachers and many researches show that the relationship between teachers and students is the important aspect of affecting junior high school students mental health, or in another words, there is positive correlation between the level of students' anxiety, improper behaviors and the inharmonious relationship between teachers and students. When junior high school students feel that their teachers are not satisfied with them, the level of students' anxiety may rise and students may lose psychological security easily. What's more, the relationship between teachers and students with conflicts and contradictions may eventually lead to students' learning-weariness minds and all kinds of extreme behaviors.
3.3.3 Deficiencies in Traditional English Teaching Manners
At present, traditional examination-oriented education system still firmly occupies the English class. Junior school still puts a high value on teachers teaching, not students' comprehensive development, and still weighs the teachers' leading role, but not students' main principal role. In the eyes of junior high school students, the class is boring and insecurity and homework after school is endless, thus there is not any fun with their study lives at all. As is known to all, there are too much knowledge for junior high school students to recite in the English learning process. Such tedious learning may continuously kill junior high school students' enthusiasm for English learning, but teachers still try their best to force students to learn. As a result, students are more reluctant to learn English. And even worse, the examination-oriented education can only bring students more sense of failure and insecurity.
Chapter Four Strategies to Create Junior High School Students’ Security in English Class
It is well known that successful English teaching depends on a harmonious class atmosphere with security. Thus how to eliminate the junior high school students’ insecurity in English class has become one of the biggest problems to be solved to exalt English class efficiency.
4.1 To Pay Attention to Students' Physical and Psychological Development
4.1.1 To Focus on Junior High School Students’ Physical and Psychological Development
The world health organization points out that the school is the most appropriate place to promote students' healthy development of mind and body. Schools can interfere in some special problems and provide students with some problem-solving skills and professional psychological consulting to transfer the improper behaviors of students. Compared with high school students and primary school students, students in junior high school are facing the special period of accelerated development of mind and body, so they are very curious and fear about every changing thing that happened on them. Some researches show that nearly half of the junior high school students are staying in a high level of anxiety about their learning and lives for a long time, which undoubtedly does great harm to their mind and body development. So school should strengthen educational work about the junior high school students' physical and psychological development to establish a sound system of school mental health services, such as opening psychological courses to help students set up correct cognitive perspective; carrying out psychological lecture to enable students to hold a correct psychology to face tests; organizing theme class meeting to popularize the knowledge about mental health, all of which can promote students' physical and psychological health.
4.1.2 To Reduce Junior High School Students' Pressure
Considering the phenomenon that junior high school students are facing heavy schoolwork burden, to reduce junior high school students' pressure efficiently, it requires schools, teachers and parents, three forces cooperation. Schools should implement the rules and regulations strictly to enable students' enough rest time. No missed lessons at weekends. No classes at night. The second is teacher's work. Teachers should assignment homework reasonably. No excessive homework and reduce the time of ranking and publicizing examination result. “As is known to all, only a small part of students can gain high marks and good ranks, while as for more students, the method to rank and publicize result must make them insecure in the class (Wang Xiaochun, 2014, p.90)”. What's more, teachers should learn to master the method of layered homework, which means that teachers provide students with two or more different levels homework to let them select one and finish it according to their own ability. Only in this way can students consolidate the knowledge they learned. Last but not least, parents should cooperate with schools' work. As parents, it is important to create a comfortable atmosphere without heavy pressure at home. Don't force children to take other cram schools with the excuse " to be good for children", which makes children only shuttle through school, home and cram school every day, such a "three point one line" living mode without any fun.
4.2 To Create a Harmonious Campus Interpersonal Relationship
4.2.1 Relation between Students and Students
Students are the most important part in a class, so to create a harmonious relation between students and students is an important part of creating security in junior high school English class, as well as the basic premise to realize efficient teaching. junior high school students who are in puberty are very concerned about their peers’ attitude about themselves. Because they are in the age stage in which students' emotions are rich and sometimes their moods change obviously and quickly, it is very common to have some small contradictions among students. At this time, teacher should learn to use each contradiction between students to enhance their friendship, only by this can students have more chance to communicate and cooperate in English class, other than more fierce segregation and disputes. New curriculum reform emphasizes students' cooperative learning by autonomous exploration, which means teachers can divide whole class into several study groups, assign tasks to each group and then encourage each group member to work together to complete the learning task. Such concept is not only good for students to master knowledge, but also help students to form the spirit of cooperation, and eventually form a harmonious relation between students and students. What's more, for those students who have a weak foundation in English, when they study in groups, they can get some efficient learning methods to improve their learning efficiency after class, and get more minds to answer English teacher's questions by discussing with group members in the class, which can increase their sense of success. Then they can gain have security naturally. Taking the class 8 Grade 7 of Lianyungang XinHai Experimental high School I interned at as an example, the head teacher divided the class into 9 groups according to students' actual situation. At the beginning of the term, she encouraged students to participate in setting the class goals and rules, and then there are some competitions in the form of group, which could arouse whole students' enthusiasm about learning. In this way, when students help and compete with each other, they can make great progress together, and at the same time, the harmonious relation between students and students can be formed too.
4.2.2 Relation between Teachers and Students
A harmonious relation between teachers and students in junior high school English class plays a positive role, which can promote students' comprehensive development. Many studies have shown that the relation between teachers and students has a great influence on students' class security. If the relation between teachers and students is harmonious, students can have strong security naturally. Then how should English teachers do to create a harmonious relation with students?
On the one hand, the teacher must love students and care everything about students. When students make mistakes, the teacher can't use some simple and crude ways, such as harsh criticism or calling students' parents to cope with their mistakes. Actually if the teacher tries to believe these students with appropriate tolerance, it may be more easily to get into students' heart. On the other hand, it is important to treat every student fairly. Indeed, nobody doesn't like excellent students, but there is always some differences between the good or the bad. As the growth of their age, junior high school students no longer worship their teachers blindly. They gradually form their own opinion about their teachers. At this point, just as the truth Rafe Esquith said, “teachers can be strict to students, but cannot be unfair, which may let students despise and stay away from their teachers (Rafe Esquith, 2007, p.8)”. When a teacher communicates with students, therefore, she must pay attention to the method with democracy and equality. Only in this way can you win their trust, and may students be willing to get close with you. Then it may be easier to build a harmonious relation between teachers and students, which can finally create security in junior high school English class.
4.3 To Improve the Level of English Teachers’ Teaching in Junior High school
Different from other subjects, the English class in junior high school has its own characteristics. English teachers should combine the characteristics of the junior high school students' physical and psychological development with practical teaching to achieve the aim to create students' security and efficient teaching.
4.3.1 To Increase Interest Teaching in English Class
With the advance of science and technology, all kinds of modern teaching methods have been applied in English teaching, and students also prefer these interesting and flexible teaching methods. These can not only stimulate students' learning enthusiasm, but also can make the atmosphere of English class more active, which fully embodies the characteristics of happy teaching pattern. What's more, in such a class atmosphere, students can be no longer insecure.
Pictures, including charts and stick drawings, as one of visual aids in English teaching, have the characteristics of freshness, vividness and intuition. Micro-Video is another aid to attract students' attention. It is always used in the presentation in lead-in part, demonstration in oral-training part and the practice in listening and comprehensive part. To a certain extent, they all focus on students' eyes, ears, mouths, and minds to concentrate students' attention, which helps teachers a lot to break through the difficult points in English class teaching.
4.3.2 To Improve the Quality of Asking Questions
There are factors affecting the efficiency of questions in the junior high school English class. Among these factors the function of English teachers plays a key role, and their ways and attitudes of asking questions directly determine the degree of students' acceptance and the level of students' security. Then, how should English teachers do to do a good job in asking questions?
Firstly, English teachers should participate in some professional training to master some skills of asking questions in English class systematically. Teachers also should prepare well for question part in advance, including designing questions and reference answers. Only in this way can they design a good part of asking questions for students in English class.
Moreover, teachers should design the difficulty level of questions according to students' basis of English, which conforms to the theory of" Zone of Proximal Development" from Vygotsky. That's to say English teachers should be clear about the English level that students already have and try to foresee their potential ability. According to these, English teachers can arrange proper questions, neither too easy nor too difficult. The teachers also can provide students with some guidance to help them answer questions. During the process, students can make progress, which can make them more confident and secure. Combining with the English teaching in junior high school, the main teaching aim for Grade 7 is to let students be interested in English. So teachers should ask some simple questions. For example, teacher can repeat the contents of the textbooks, and then ask students "true or false". In this way, student can feel the atmosphere of learning English and the characteristics of English communication. Teachers can also set up some situations to let students work in pairs "ask and answer", such as "What the subjects do you have? Do you like math?” which are related to students' learning lives. As for Grade 8 and Grade 9, English teachers can ask some more complex problems, such as "What do you think of The Voice of China? What is your favorite pet and why? Can you tell me how to get to...? These questions not only can let students consolidate what they learned, but also can enable students to find confidence, which are good for creating students' security in English class.
Finally, teachers should make good use of body language in asking questions, such as getting more close to students, using eyes contact to increase students' security and using smile to express teachers' affirmation of students, etc. In 101 “Answers” for New Teachers and Their Mentors: Effective Teaching Tips for Daily Classroom Use, Annette L.Breaux emphasizes that “the farther teachers standing with students, they may be more uninterested in teachers’ teaching contents (Annette L.Breaux, 2007, 35)”. Teachers' feedback is also quite important. When one student answers correctly, the teacher can make a conclusion with smile, such as “Perfect! Amazing!” When one student cannot answer the question, the teacher can give him more tips. And even if one student does not say a word, the teacher still can say gently: "Don’t be shy. No matter. Sit down, please.(Ye Wenlan, 2013, 40)" If English teachers can do so, students' security in the class can be well protected.
4.3.3 To Enhance Teachers' Classroom English
In English class, English is the tool of learning, as well as the goal of learning. Compared with other subjects, teachers' classroom English is limited to the level of students' English. At the same time, students also cannot fully or smoothly express their views because of the limited language ability. This is a practical problem to be solved in current English class in junior high school. So if English teachers can use classroom English scientifically and reasonably, it can be easier for them to create efficient English class with security in junior high school.
As for classroom English, English teachers, first of all, should do a good job in oral English as a model. One of the goals of English teaching is to cultivate students' good sense of English language, including correct pronunciation and intonation. So teachers must improve their spoken English, which directly affects the quality of students' learning. Next, English teachers should pay attention to choose the words and sentence patterns which are suitable for junior high school students, because that students can understand what English teachers say is an important marker of efficient classroom English. It is extremely insecure for students to stay in an English class in which they cannot understand teachers' classroom English. As a result, English teachers should choose appropriate classroom English according to the basis of students' existing knowledge scope to express teaching content. Finally, the appropriate talking speed is also crucial. Too fast, students can't keep up with the teacher's explanation; while too slow, students' attentions are easily to distract from class. So after choosing the appropriate vocabulary and sentence patterns, the speed suitable for junior high school students would be better for students' learning.
Chapter Five Conclusion
All in all, it is common that students lack security during the English teaching in junior high school. English teachers should pay close attention to students' physical and psychological development, try their best to help junior high school students create a harmonious campus interpersonal relationship and enhance the level of their own level of English teaching. Only in this way, can teachers successfully create an English class with security for students to enable students to participate in the process of English teaching activities actively in a harmonious class environment, and finally improve the efficiency of teachers' teaching and students' learning.
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