audience to watch the students’ “free performance” without offering any implication. Therefore, it makes the students feel puzzled and teaching aim has not been achieved. Hedge(2002)suggests that teachers need to build competence and confidence in fulfilling the various roles, and necessary in service training is need to ensure that teachers are properly supported in any moves toward implementing the communication in class.
2.4 Imbalanced teacher-students interaction and students-students interaction
Classroom interaction has various forms. The teacher asks students a question and students
respond to it in class. That’s what we called teacher-students interaction. \interactions involve mutual communication between teachers and students\2002). Such kind of interaction takes place in high frequency in English classroom teaching. It is commonly used to arouse students’ attention and to check the students’ learning process. But most middle school students always hate this interaction. Therefore teachers have to make some efforts to change the circumstance. And the teacher will divide the whole class into several groups, the students learn from the others and share their opinions though the group discussion. That’s so-called student-student interaction. In English class, English as an new language posed in front of the students and it is difficult for them to understand. Because they are not familiar with the thinking mode of learning English and it is also hard for them to adapt the new language. In their minds, what they should do in English class is to follow the teacher’s steps because teacher is the center of the whole class. As we all know that middle school students are lacking in the initiative of learning. However, in many language classrooms, the teacher-students interaction is much more than student-student interaction, and there is even no effective student-student interaction. As a result, students’ own mind has not been developed and they have no curiosity to learn English. So the students still cannot experience the learning process as one of interaction and discovery, their initiative and creativity are confined. Therefore, we need some strategies to change the situation.
3 Possible strategies for meaningful classroom interaction
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How to enable the classroom interaction to perform functions effectively is a hard job.
Some possible ways to promote meaningful interaction are based on the following points.
3.1Curiosity leading strategy
One of the greatest enemies of successful teaching is students’ boredom. This is often
caused by the deadening predictability of much classroom time. If the students frequently know what is going to happen in the next period, they will feel very bored. Teachers need to violate their own behavior pattern, and must do their best to stimulate the students’ interest. Therefore, the curiosity leading strategies should be employed in the language classroom. Organizing the Competitive Games and Activities are very good choices. Just as a saying goes，“Competition is a part of human nature”. In English classroom teaching, competition is one of the best ways arousing interest. We can mobilize advanced students to help less advanced students. If their partners make progress in study, both of them will be praised. Here comes a way which is commonly used in English classroom teaching-Group Discussion. In order to give each student more chances to communicate, and create an independent and self-confident environment, teachers can divide the whole class into several groups. The competition then can be held among these groups. During this section, the competitors of each group will try their best to win the games, such as guessing riddles, improvisation, performance, making speech, etc. This kind of competition can not only promote interaction but also establish collectivism. Therefore, it is significant to use competition to promote interaction in English classroom. And it is crucial that the competition can satisfy the students' desire of self-expression.
3.2 .Cooperation strategies
Cooperation is an important factor in successful English classroom teaching. Actually, middle school students are not familiar with English, even we can say it is strange to them. If
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they want to understand what the teacher says or what the context means, teacher and students cooperate is the best way. Performing and acting is mostly related to cooperative learning. “cooperative learning means sharing, encouraging, and accepting responsibility for one's own learning and that of others, not leaving all responsibility to the teacher”(Rivers ,1987). Feeling comfortable in the English classroom means more than the seating well arranged and room perfectly decorated. It means that the students feel at ease with the teachers, feel at home with one another, and feel good about them. Teachers should not only liberate students from the very fears that preclude interaction, but also create related environment so as to endow the students with the ability to communicate in real-life situation. There are several ways to achieve that.
3.2.1. Pair work performance
The pair work performance is mostly used for practicing dialogue. Each student is given role to perform. They can exchange roles after one performance and they can also exchange partners as they try to make deals. The roles they act are like these: buyers and sellers, doctors and patients, teaches and students, etc. To be involved in the activities is a very good chance for students to feel, to understand and to use language. The students may feel as if they were the men they acted while they are performing.
3.2.2 Group discussion
The group discussion is commonly used to promote English classroom interaction. In order to let students take responsibilities for the discussion, teacher should teach them how to continue conversations themselves, and encourage them to speak freely. By participating in this kind of student-controlled discussion, the students may be more self-confident to communicate with others in English.
3.2.3 Role-play
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The role-play is the most motivational way to stimulate students to communicate in
English. But in general, the teacher should not allow the whole class to perform simultaneously in one scene together. The students are required to perform the roles they are given by using tone of voice, facial expression and gesture to convey interesting and factual information about each other to their classmates. The play they performed may bring more fun to the whole class, and then more interest will be aroused to the role-play activity.
3.3 Question-raising strategy
English classroom has special features because it is the main place for middle school
students to learn and practice English. Forty-five minutes is very short, and the students can not understand all what the teacher says in class. Asking questions is the most popular strategy in classroom instructions; it is also the most influential teaching art. \and answering questions is a very common speech form, but it is crucial to an effective language acquisition\(Wang , 2002), and it is widely adopted to build interactions. Researches indicated that the proper questioning can not only arouse the students’ interest and curiosity, but also find out the students’ weak points and make them up immediately. So teachers should try their best to set up the useful questions and live time as feedback time in each class. It is useful for students to inquire the teacher some information which were not understood in class or something else they desire to know. That is to say, the teacher should provide the students opportunities to help their understanding in and after class.
Differing from the traditional teaching method, the new curriculum standard put the students in the center in class but not the teacher. In the past, the teacher controls over the whole class and always posed questions to the students. And students are expected to respond to the demands the teacher makes. Students hardly exchange their opinions, ideas to teacher or their classmates. Both students and teacher may feel tedious. So instead of being tedious, the question-answer interaction in the student-centered classroom can become stimulating and engaging. The students will be motivated to communicate in English if they are interested in it. There no longer exists the one-sided question, but the two-sided question or even multi-sided
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question. In and out of the class, the teachers and students can interact freely. The students are inspired to use English when they are really asked to express their opinions, feelings and ideas. Therefore, the more active and imaginative the students are encouraged to be, the more they will desire to participate in the class activities. While communicating, if the students make some mistakes in vocabulary or phrases, the teachers should not interrupt or correct them immediately. Furthermore, instead of directly pointing to the student's mistake, the teacher should correctly restate the whole phrase. The question-raising interaction may arouse both the teachers' and the students' interests. Teachers will be fond of this way to exchange information about the context or their own opinions and information. The students will gain confidence in using English as they develop the ability to communicate more naturally with their classmates and teachers.
3.4. Resource-utilizing strategies
In English classroom interaction, in order to arouse students’ interest, to make students
active, to achieve student-centered teaching, the teacher can take full use of different resource.
3.4.1 Newspapers and magazines
While reading newspapers and magazines of native speaker’s, the students will gain a lot
of information about the English spoken countries’ culture, customs, economy, politics and literature, which may broaden their minds. And the language used in newspapers and magazines is purer than they have learned in their textbooks. The students are deeply interested in this kind of materials. The most important, the students can not simply read the materials, but put them to use in original ways. For example, the teacher can promote students to act short play with city maps, guidebooks and bus schedules, along with restaurant menus, theater listings, etc. The students may feel excited in performance by feeling that they are in the situation.
3.4.2 Videos and movies
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