Ⅱ. On the Goals and Rules of Classroom Activity

2.1 The Target of the Classroom Activity
Classroom activities are the general term of the behavior that the teachers and students taking part in the classroom together and always pointing to learning. In a more general sense, the design of the English classroom activities should take whether it can promote learners' learning as the basic goals and direction. In other words, whether the activities that designed can help learners hoist their English capacity is the criteria to measure the success of the classroom activities.
Under the background of the new curriculum reform, the basic goal in terms of meaning and content has broadened and deepen further. In new curriculum, with the view that adheres to the “people-oriented”, “comprehensive development” “multidimensional goal” and “reduce the burden”, the basic target which is to promote the learning can be interpreted as whether classroom activity is “value, effect, efficiency, and charm”. In short, the basic aim of teaching design is the creation of the “four haves” classroom activity: “valuable, effective, efficient and attractive”.
The contents of the “four haves”, in the classroom activity design, are listed as follows:
(1) The Value of the Classroom Activity
The value of the class activities is the rationality of the classroom activities. Whether the design of classroom activities is valuable depends mainly on whether the aim pointed to in the classroom activities is suitable for the outlook of students’ development that is upheld in the new curriculum. In other words, that is whether it can meet the needs of the students’ development. In the teaching of English, if it is valuable or not is mainly embodied in the ability to promote learners' comprehensive ability of using the language or the development of its core elements (language knowledge, language skills, learning strategies, cultural consciousness and emotional attitude).
(2) Effective Classroom Activity
The target of “effective” in the activity design refers to if the activities designed by teachers can achieve learning goals, that is to say, through the activities, whether the learners can gain the development of their ability set in the aim. The target of "effect" mainly points to that whether English teachers in the design of classroom activities create necessary environment and conditions to help learners to achieve learning goals. For example, after the vocabulary learning activities organized by teachers, the students can memorize and apply these words, so, this activity is effective.
(3) Efficient Classroom Activity
The target of “efficient” in the classroom activity mainly refers to the ratio of the teaching effectiveness to the learners’ investment in terms of time, energy and so on, That is to say, the rate of learning output and input. The efficiency of English classroom activities often comes from the teachers making full use of learning resources, the mining of the learners’ potential and the optimization of learning process. Such as a vocabulary learning activities, in which students only recite the word according to the word list and the efficiency is not high.
(4) Attractive Classroom Activity
In the activity, “attractive” orientation points to the activities can attract learners and stimulate students’ learning enthusiasm. Attractive classroom activities can improve the learner’s participation in the pleasant atmosphere, arouse the enthusiasm of learners, and the creativity of learners. Creating a charming class is an important way to guide learners from “be to learn” “cramming” to “to learn” and “learn happily”.
From the basic connotation of “four haves” in the design of classroom activities, we can see that, “valuable” assures the rationality of the learning goals and direction, which is the starting point and the foothold of the design, so it is also the most basic goal. “Effective”, is based on the ability to achieve the preset value; “efficient” is based on the ratio between promotion of effect and the input. While “attractive” takes “value” “effect” and “efficiency” as the premise, otherwise, “attractive” may become a pastime or interference to distract. Therefore, the objectives of “four haves” are not independent but the progressive transformation relationship. This means that English teachers in the design of classroom activities should put value and effect in the first place, and then pursuit the efficiency and charm after fulfill the target of value and effect. In other words, English teachers should embrace the ideas of the “optimization”, constantly increase value, efficiency and charm for classroom activities. 论中学英语课堂活动设计(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_10290.html