A Brief Instruction to the topic of “Why do you like koalas”

                                       __________ Zhang Li

　　Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Zhang Li, I come from Yidu City. Today I am much honored to stand here to talk about the topic “Why do you like koalas”. The topic is selected from the book 《Go for it》, Students’ book, 7B. The content I will talk about is Section A, from 1a to 2c in Unit 3. I will divide the instruction into five parts: They are Content Analysis; Students’ Advantages and disadvantages Analysis; Teaching Method and Learning Method Analysis; Teaching Procedure Analysis; and Assignment.

　　Part 1   Content Analysis

　　The language goals in this class are to describe animals and express preferences. The new words and expressions in this section are koala, tiger, elephant, dolphin, panda, lion, penguin, giraffe, cute, smart, ugly, kind of…etc. What’s more, the teacher should teach the student to learn to use “what animal do you like? Why do you like it? ” The emotion factors of the topic are to foster the students to love animals, love nature and let the students to protect the environment consciously.

　　Part 2 Students’ Advantages and Disadvantages Analysis

　　In this topic, there are some advantages for the students. First: they are quite familiar with some of the animals, such as cat, dog, sheep, cow…etc. so I think I can lead my students to study today’s topic very naturally. Second: some adjectives used to describe animals such as interesting, clever are very easy for the students to learn. Third: many students show great interest in learning animals.

　　But there are also some disadvantages for the students. They don’t know some animals, because they haven’t seen or heard them from the text, such as koala. And further more, some words are hard to pronounce, such as penguin, giraffe.

　　So during my teaching, I will help the students overcome the difficulties and let them learn the language goals fully.

　　Part 3 Teaching Method and Learning Method Analysis

　　In this topic, I will use five-step Teaching Method and Task-based Language Learning. I will design three tasks to help the students learn. I think if I want to improve the students’ spoken English, I should give them enough chances to practice, and I will also use pair work, group work to let the students take an active part in all kinds of activities. That is “Learning by doing, learning by using”. I’ll also use Audio-visual Teaching. Get my students to listen to some animal sounds and let the students guess what animals they are. Through some direct-viewing pictures, let students meet some animals they haven’t seen before, such as koala, penguin. Stimulate their learning interests, Let students be the masters of the class teaching, thus, student-centered teaching pattern is well shown. So I think my teaching methods are in line with the requirement of《New English Curriculum Criterion》.  

　　In my class, I’ll follow 《New English Curriculum Criterion》 “Teaching for the leadership; studying is the main body; practice for the master line” to give the different request to the different ability level students. I’ll lead my students to study and cooperate with others.

　　Part 4   Teaching Procedure Analysis

　　There are five steps in this part.

　　Step 1  Greeting.

　　First of all, I will greet my students as usual and encourage them to use the useful expressions they have learned to communicate with me, let them feel happy and relaxed in my class. I will ask them: How are you? Do you like animals? What kind of animals do you like best? Do you want to go the zoo? etc. In this way, the interaction between teacher and students is activated.

　　Step 2  Memory test.

　　In this step I will show some animal sounds and let the students guess what animals they are. Then I’ll use computer to present a lot of animal pictures quickly, see how many words they can remember. To do this, I want my students to revise some animal words they have learned before.

　　Step 3  Presentation

　　Based on Step 2, I will show more animal pictures to teach the new words by asking: What’s it? Do you like it? Why do you like it? In this step, I’ll not only teach the names of the animals, but also present the description words with the animals, such as a smart dolphin, a cute koala, an ugly lion. I want to say, if the students don’t know koala, I will tell them this kind of animal lives in Australia, it looks like a bear, but it lives in the tree. In this way, I can teach many new words. Then I will give them enough time to practice the words individually. Because I think vocabulary is really important to the English learners. They are just like stones and bricks of a house. So without them, students will get into trouble in learning English.

　　Step 4  Practice

　　In this step I’ll get the students to work in pairs and make conversations about animals in the picture 1a. Then I will ask some pairs to act it out.

　　Step 5  Listening

　　In this step, I will get the students to listen to the tape twice and ask them to finish Section A 2a and 2b. While the students are writing something, I will go around the classroom to help some students. For example: Maybe some students don’t know the meaning of “kind of”. I will guide them to look at the two pictures and make a comparison about the two elephants. I am sure it’s not very difficult for them. New English Assessment System requires our English learners should have the ability to guess new words according to the text.

　　Part 5  Assignment.

　　In order to consolidate the students’ knowledge level, I will design three tasks. Get my students to choose one or two of them to finish.

　　Task One:  Make a survey.

Let the students work in groups, ask and answer their favourite kinds of animals, then make a survey about which kind of animal is the most popular by asking: Do you like…/What’s your favorite animal? Why? At last, the students summarize the most popular animal in the class like this: In our group, three students like koalas. Because they think koalas are very cute.

　　Task Two: Pairs Work.

　　Based on Task One. Let each pair choose 2 or 3 kinds of animals they want to see most, and then ask them to make a plan on visiting a zoo in dialogues. I’ll give an example:

　　A: Where do you want to go now?

　　B: Let’s see the elephants.

　　A: The elephants? Why do you like elephants?

　　B: Oh. They are interesting.

　　A: Yes, but they are kind of ugly, too.

　　B: Oh, where do you want to go?

　　A: I want to see the pandas.

　　B: Oh, I love pandas, too. They are very lovely.

　　A: Let’s go! They are over there on the left. Just cross from the giraffe.

　　Task three: Homework

　　    Give the students more topics, such as animals, subjects, sports, foods, drinks, colors and so on. Divide the students into 5-6 groups, each group choose a topic. Using: What’s your favourite …? Why …? to talk about the topics freely if time is admitted. Then write a report as homework.

　　During my teaching, I’ll try my best to get my class alive and encourage the students to promote cooperation and communication with each other. I’ll always remember the general aim of English teaching is to cultivate the students’ comprehensive ability of using English. And I’ll use this to guide my teaching.

　　That’s all. Thanks for listening.