3.3 Warming-up Activities Based on TBLT
Constructing relaxing and free learning atmosphere and enhancing spoken language communication, warming-up activity is an important path to prepare for the follow-up topics in classes. As the application of constructivism in the teaching pedagogy, the task-based language learning (TBLT) can make a solid foundation for the use of warming-up activities in intensive reading courses.
3.3.1 The Principles of TBLT
As stated in the previous part, warming-up activities have dominant effects on the results of the classes, so it is advisable to conduct effective warming-up in classes. Teachers should follow the following principles as the guideline in their English teaching practice as far as warming-up is concerned.
The first principle is authenticity. This principle is to point out that the materials used in the task guided by TBLT should be close to the real life. So does the situation which the specific activities occur in. The design of the task following the authenticity principle is not completely opposed to the fictitious language materials appearing in the classroom task, but is to create the environment that is real or close to the real one.
The second principle is pertinence. Warming-up approaches must be used on the basis of the content of the teaching materials. What teachers should pay attention to first is whether the warming-up activities are closely related to the classes or not. According to the different contents, different targets and different designs of classes, it is obliged to use the corresponding methods to perform the warming-up activities.
The third principle is interestingness. It is all known to people that interest is the best teacher, especially for young students. The more interesting and attractive the warming-up is, the easier it will be for teachers to lead students into the course material. So the interestingness of the warming-up is of great importance.
3.3.2 The Application of TBLT in Warming-up Activities in Intensive Reading Course for English Majors
Reading is the main way to obtain some information and it plays a very important role in foreign language teaching and learning. Since the 1960s, With the development of psycholinguistics, applied linguistics and cognitive linguistics, the study of psycholinguistic process in reading results in several reading models: bottom-up model, top-down model, interactive model and schema theory, among which, the first two models have exert great influence on English teaching in the past. 热身活动在英语精读课堂教学中的应用基于建构主义学习理论(6):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_6179.html