II. A Brief Introduction to Teaching Aids and the Students’ Characteristics

2.1 The Classification of the Teaching Aids
There are several types of teaching aids to be utilized in the primary school English teaching. Teaching aids aim to help teachers to achieve the teaching goal. Teaching aids include physical teaching aids, (pictures, cards, chart, etc.) and electronic tools (video, audio, computer, etc.)
Physical aids: just like apples, desks, chairs, toys, models, paper folding, pictures and so on. The use of these visual teaching aids in the classroom is an important means to attract the students’ attention and vividly show the classroom content. The use of visual teaching aids can leave a deep impression to the students’ memory of the knowledge. Game aids: headdress, blocks, cards, notes, chess, puzzle, the Rubik’s cube. These tools can be entertain, stimulate students’ interest, consolidate and deepen the understanding of the knowledge. Puppet aids: with these puppets, the teachers can play a cosplay together with the students. At the same time, the teachers also can combine the cosplay with a dialogue. In this way, students can not only play games, but also practice oral English.
The characteristics of these teaching aids are as following.
(1) Intuitive. Visualization in scientific and technological activities is commonly used as a demonstration in teaching aids. Visual aids can make knowledge specific, visual, and create conditions for students’ perception, comprehension and memory of knowledge. The visual perception can help the students to combine abstract thinking with concrete things, reducing the students’ difficulties in grasping the abstract concept and helping them form a clear concept. It can also develop their ability of observation and thinking and improve the students’ learning interest and enthusiasm.
(2) Practice. Most physical media can be touched and used. It is of special significance in cultivating students’ skills.
(3) Research value. Physical media contains a large number of information about science and technology.
(4) Instruction. Sometimes teachers and students may need some instructions to guide them. When teachers are using teaching aids, they need to help students to observe the process of the teaching aids’ using and let them think about what they can learn from it. 论教具在小学英语教学中的作用(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_30322.html