How to improve the students’ Interest in English learning
...ly. It’s true that “interest means a marvelous teacher” and it leads to success, which has been proved by the stories of some great successful people. Edison was one of them; Edison liked asking strange questions and finding out how things worked. When he was a child, he set up a chemistry lab for himself and did experiments to test what he saw and thought of, because he showed great interest in things around him. Whenever he came across something he couldn’t understand, he stuck to it until he got a satisfactory answer. Later he succeeded and became a great inventor. We can say, in a sense, interest made him a great inventor. Without interest, he couldn’t have made persistent efforts so as to achieve his later brilliant success. In a word, interest plays an important part in one’s success, so does it in English learning as well. Needless to say, to improve ordinary junior middle school students’ English, teachers have pay much attention to evoking and motivating their interest however hard it is. Interest and progress go hand in hand. Middle school teachers have a make their best efforts to improve their teaching skills and methods. 3. An overview of problems that the students have in learning English Doubtlessly, First thing teachers should learn about what problems that OJMS students have in English learning. 3.1 No goals if there is no motivation The OJMS students have no impress or motivation in learning English and this results in no goals. There are two kinds or goal of a student---“short-term goal” and “ long-term goal”, Short-term goal includes such things as the urge to pass a final examination or complete a unit successfully. Long-term goal has something to do with a student’s wish to get a better job or to live in and English-speaking country one day (Wu 1995). Going to collage is supposed to be a long-term goal. There are some reasons for them to be lack of goal discouraged. Firstly, the junior middle school where I teach is a rural school .The students are mostly from peasant families. They and their parents think they have little chance to go abroad as is true. Secondly, they have a weak foundation and less confident. They feel inferior and discouraged because they haven’t been admitted to key schools as top students. Thinking they won’t be able to get college education, they show even less interest in their studies and many are just killing time in school. Thirdly, they are affected by their parents’ attitude toward study. Influenced by the boom of commodity economy, many parents especially those who are self-employers or of little education think highly of money but little of knowledge. “Knowledge doesn’t mean money, but what I want is money. I don’t think a person with college education will make more money than the one who drop himself out of middle school.” Some parents concern little about how their children are getting on with their lessons. The three above mentioned factors obviously affect students constantly in learning English and prevent them setting up short-term and long-term goals. 3.2 Lack of confidence due to weak foundation The OJMS students’ lack of confidence in English study mainly results from their weak foundation, While they are at school they don’t mind much their English study, especially boys, who are always disobedient and playful and find great pleasure in making noises and playing mischievously in English classes. As far as I know, most of the boys have weak English foundation. The students have no good habit of learning English. As a result, their English is in terrible condition-tiny vocabulary, poor skill of listening, speaking, reading etc. They learn passively and mechanically. They find it very difficult to follow the teacher when the class is conducted in English .So they are often discouraged from classroom activities and from exam results. Indeed, it is impossible for them to mak...