Keywords: teaching reflection, teachers' self-development, group activities in college English class
1. The importance of reflective teaching
Teachers' thinking about teaching is very important, because no class can be perfect. There are inevitable omissions in successful classroom teaching, so we should review and sort them out, and make a deep reflection, exploration and analysis on them, so that they can be used for reference in future teaching. Many educational experts and scholars at home and abroad attach great importance to teaching reflection. In his book "One Hundred Suggestions for Teachers", the great educator Suhomlinski repeatedly advised teachers to keep educational diaries, because diaries can teach us how to think, "A teacher who is good at analyzing his own labor can become an excellent and experienced teacher". He kept a diary for 32 years, and the diary he said is actually the reflection on writing teaching that we advocate today. Dewey is one of the famous scholars who systematically discuss reflection. He first emphasized that teaching should be reflective or reflective, and reflection can overcome the arbitrariness of choice.
Scholar Xiong Chuanwu (1999) defines reflective teaching as: "Reflective teaching is a process in which the teaching subject constantly explores and solves problems about himself, teaching purpose and teaching tools with the help of action research, and combines learning with teaching to improve the rationality of teaching practice and make himself a scholar-type teacher." The operation process of reflective teaching is a cyclic and complicated process of finding problems, observing and analyzing problems, putting forward assumptions, actively practicing and rediscovering problems. The solution of problems and the development of teachers and students are the standards of reflective teaching inspection.
Wei Shusheng, a famous educational reformer, put forward ten requirements for all teachers in his city, one of which is to write a good teaching postscript. Professor Ye Lan said that it is difficult for a teacher to become a famous teacher by writing a lesson plan for a lifetime, but it is possible to become a famous teacher by writing a reflection for three years. It can be seen that teaching reflection is a very beneficial thinking activity and re-learning method. Reflective teaching is an effective way to promote the self-development of foreign language teachers (Gao Xiang, Wang Qiang, 2003). Teachers should proceed from the subject characteristics and improve their professional quality and level in the process of continuous reflection, teaching, re-reflection and re-practice.
2. Action research on group activities in college English class.
The research on the teaching effect of classroom group activities shows that group activities help to create a good emotional atmosphere, provide a lot of interactive opportunities for language practice and practice, develop students' personality, thus effectively stimulating students' learning motivation and improving learning efficiency (Long and Porter 1985). Group activities can reduce learners' anxiety in language communication activities, make them show higher learning enthusiasm and creativity, and enable students to experience a sense of accomplishment in the process of using language.
A survey of college English teachers and teaching shows that large class size is still a big problem for college English teachers (Wang 2009). In the second college, the author implements large class teaching. Each class has about 80 students, most of whom are engineering students. One way to solve this problem is to carry out group activities frequently in class, and the teaching effect of group activities determines the overall teaching effect to some extent. In fact, the teaching effect of group activities is not satisfactory in many cases. Many students are used to listening carefully and have a weak sense of participation in class. They just talk in group activities, without interaction. Students seldom cooperate and don't know how to communicate. During the discussion, some students speak Chinese, while others with poor foundation say nothing or simply play with their mobile phones. Team members think independently, are used to writing first and then talking, and communicate less with each other. Not many students really participate in the discussion. Sometimes it seems that the scene is very lively, but the harvest is very small, and the teaching effect of the activity is far from the original intention. Dai Weidong (2009) thinks that it is necessary to combine the actual environment of foreign language teaching, flexibly use and integrate various teaching methods, and at the same time reflect on teaching ideas in time. The author thinks and works hard from the following aspects.
2. 1 topic selection
First of all, we should discuss topics and activities, and try to choose topics that are close to students' life and study, related to the text and of interest to students. After the outbreak of avian influenza, people abroad are talking about whether to get a vaccine, so the author introduces this topic into the classroom for them to discuss. Every student has his own ideas, words and wishes. It happened that after less than half a year, the students really encountered this problem, and the discussion in class gave them a reference. For another example, after learning "Why do I become a teacher" in class, let students discuss "Why do I go to college". Students are willing to share different views. After learning to read and write the third volume of the text "Morality First" from a new perspective, it is a dilemma for students to watch the movie "The Smell of Women" to guide them to discuss what they would choose if they were Charlie, whether to give naughty students a lift to Harvard or to remain silent but be expelled from school. After learning the text "prenuptial agreement", let the students discuss their views on prenuptial agreement and whether they will choose to sign such an agreement in the future. The students expressed their opinions and put forward many original opinions. After learning the article "How to Cultivate Emotional Intelligence" in the fourth volume of New Horizon Reading and Writing, organize students to discuss "which is more important, IQ or EQ". The author first asks students to name many celebrities and successful people, and then guides them to deeply analyze which is more important in their success factors, IQ or EQ, and express their opinions. Practice has proved that interesting, close to life or in-depth topics can stimulate students' enthusiasm for participation. The choice of topic sometimes directly affects the development of group activities.
2.2 The role of teachers
The role of teachers in group activities can not be ignored. The basic objectives of English classroom teaching should be: (1) to cultivate and maintain students' strong interest and motivation in learning; (2) Creating and providing learning and communication resources (classroom and extracurricular); (3) Help students acquire learning strategies; (4) Help students solve their learning difficulties (Shu 2006). As far as group activities are concerned, teachers should not only choose appropriate tasks and themes, but also attach importance to learner training in teaching, so that students can understand the significance of group activities and how to actively participate in them, and enhance their awareness of participating in classroom activities. Before group activities, teachers can teach some communication strategies, provide relevant background knowledge and vocabulary, and let students express themselves more fluently in the discussion. In the process of group activities, we should also be good at finding problems and actively coordinating them, and encourage exchanges and cooperation among team members. Teachers are not only designers and organizers of group activities and tasks, but also guides and agitators of activities. If teachers assign tasks, then let group activities go with the flow and adopt a non-intervention attitude, thinking that this is student-centered, which is a misunderstanding of group activities as classroom teaching activities (Pang Jixian, 2000). In addition, teachers should also control the time, because proper time arrangement can improve the effectiveness of group activities. After the group activities are completed, teachers should have appropriate feedback, evaluation, comments and summary. Facts show that students are very concerned about the teacher's evaluation, and the teacher's timely performance will definitely give them great confidence.
2.3 Division of labor among team members
In order to ensure students to participate in group activities, members of each group can be divided into different groups. 5-6 people in each group, one as a spokesperson, responsible for the speech and report after the discussion; One person as a secretary, write down what everyone discussed; One person acts as a timekeeper to remind everyone to complete the tasks assigned by the teacher within the specified time; A coordinator who supervises and ensures that all team members participate in the discussion, and the rest are other team members. The role division of the group changes regularly, giving all members the opportunity to try different roles. In addition to oral reports, each group is required to submit written discussions. It records the discussion topic, time, members and specific content. Teachers will consider students' performance in group discussion when giving students their usual grades, which is part of the process evaluation of students. Sometimes two students can apply together and cooperate to complete it, which can reduce the pressure on students and let more students participate. Arrange time to give each group the opportunity to report as much as possible, otherwise it will easily dampen students' enthusiasm.