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Teaching English with three Hs(I)
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深圳外国语学校英语组组长 张建军
WHEN a person is learning a foreign language, he must do more than translate everything into his own language. He must be able to use the foreign language, forgetting all about his own. In reality, however, students are likely to translate to understand if given time and chance. To deprive my students of such time and chance, I have been carrying out the experiment of “high input, high speed, high frequency” in class.
By high input, I mean exposing students to a considerable amount of language material in the form of listening and reading. It is not uncommon for students to know every word in an expression without understanding its meaning. They may know a word without knowing where to use it. They tend to learn them as English equivalents to Chinese words.
With so little incentive, it may induce passive learning. This leads to Chinglish. High input exposes students to more different aspects of a theme. It broadens their minds. It gets them involved.
Of course, themes may vary. But while class procedures may differ, the essense is the same: Use high input to get students into creative learning. When dealing with a text, we conduct a comprehensive learning of it, making sure students understand the theme, the writer's view and useful expressions as most teachers do, but we dig for more. High input makes it possible for us to introduce to the class more references concerning culture, related history, politics, religion, even a specific geographic location and climate.
This definitely keeps the students involved and interested. It helps them understand better the people of the target language and in turn gain a better understanding of the language itself. The wide range of information provided by high input initiates students into creative learning and thinking. Ample input helps prepare them to produce idiomatic English.
Besides learning the compulsive text, we supply students with some extra materials relevant to the given subject. These materials may be above the actual level of the students, but they are graded not chaotic, selected not random and still comprehensible. Students can understand the meaning without understanding very well the form or some words. This challenges students and attracts their renewed interest.
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