From 14th to 15th March, Anqing Foreign Language School’s Primary Department held the seminar on English textbook ‘Hooked on Phonics’. Teachers Zhang Cheng, Dong Cuiping with the Primary Section and teacher Zhou Lin with Anqing Foreign Language School’s brother school--Ping Dingshan Wei Lun Bilingual School respectively showcased a seminar. In attendance were Anqing Foreign Language School’s President Madam Huang Wenli and other school leaders, teacher Zhu Hua with Beijing Hong Cheng Education Group, teacher Wu Xiaoli from Wei Lun Bilingual School in addition to other English teachers from Anqing Foreign Language School’s Primary Section.
Initially since last September, Anqing Foreign Language School’s Primary Department has adopted the original edition of the American English textbook ‘Hooked on Phonics’ in Grade One, whose teaching content and corresponding Phonics complied with children ’s language learning laws. What’s more, the preliminary results of the teaching experiment were achieved after half-a-year exploration.
Furthermore, during the seminar, three teachers taught ‘Unit 2 Revision’ ‘This is my friend’ ‘Unit 3 -id’ respectively, which proceeded discussions in terms of the monogram teaching, review of the multi-monogram pronunciation and the learning on key sentence patterns.
Obviously, all three teachers conducted elaborate preparations beforehand. Afterwards, the English Teaching& Research Group arranged lesson explanation and appraisal sessions, during which all teachers put forward incredible suggestions.
To be specific, three teachers took full advantage of the teaching materials, laid emphasis on methods and practice, which greatly aroused students’ enthusiasm in learning through scientific and logical instructional design. Therefore, students spoke enthusiastically and took the initiative to practice spelling skills. Moreover, school leaders and all teachers were deeply impressed by students’ clear and appealing English pronunciation in addition to the light-hearted and lively classroom teaching atmosphere.
After the demonstration lessons, the English Teaching& Research Group organized lesson evaluation activities. Teachers all agreed that compared with last October’s seminar, this year’s classroom teaching embodied teachers’ further understanding into the teaching materials in that the advantages of the textbook and the scientific nature of Phonics were better manifested. Three teachers fortified their confidence in the tentative textbooks, expressing that they would throw themselves into their future teaching work with more enthusiasm to strive hard to make Phonics a major feature in Anqing Foreign Language School’s English teaching in junior grades.
Overall, this classroom teaching discussion session was one of the measures on the research into the experimental teaching materials. In the near future, Anqing Foreign Language School shall decide on the ancillary textbooks in Grade Two, conduct textbook training and arrange teaching programs to set the scene for experiments in the next stage.