. 179
.
15
Classroom Management: A Case Study
Professor Fan Yi
15.0 Introduction With the aid of other approaches, communicative approaches have been widely employed in the English language teaching in Singapore schools. Communicative approaches are established on such an psycholinguistic assumption that effective language teaching and efficient language learning only occur in a positive class climate, which involves three essentials ---easy atmosphere, motivating environment and active participation (Widdowson, 1978; Littlewood, 1984). An easy class atmosphere makes pupils feel emotionally easy with learning tasks and the teacher. A tense atmosphere makes pupils nervous and thus hinders them from participating in communicative activities. Setting up a motivating environment requires the teacher to supply pupils with comprehensible, relevant and interesting input and large varieties of class activities, such as role-play, pair work, group work and class discussion so that the pupils are entirely involved and immersed in the given learning activities (Krashen,1981). Communicative approaches attach great
importance to pupils’ active participation in classroom activities, with a firm belief that without pupils’ active participation teaching work will certainly fail, no matter how well it has been planned. In fact, both easy class atmosphere and motivating environment serve this purpose. Unlike traditional teaching approaches, which claim that effective instructions are achieved in good class order and discipline (Fantana, 1985), communicative approaches try to involve pupils into learning activities so that they produce less discipline problems. The teacher encourages pupils to speak up, play their parts, raise questions, even argue with their peers or the teacher, so long as
面向 21 世纪外语教学论
. 180
.
their topic sticks to the lesson. For communicative approaches, good class order and control are not
Bibliography: Fantana,D. Psychology for Teachers. London: The British Psychological Society and Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Krashen, S. 1981. The Input Hypothesis. Cambridge University Press. Littlewood, W.T. 1984. Foreign and Second Language Learning. Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H.G. 1978. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford University Press.