How English is Made: Direct Hit on Gaokao 130

Author: Li Cen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: "How English is Made: Directly Targeting Gaokao 130" addresses the misconceptions and weak points in high school English teaching, such as the "swallowing whole" phenomenon in English reading comprehension and cloze tests, and the issue of focusing only on explaining correct answers while neglecting incorrect ones during instruction. The book proposes a series of countermeasures. Its content is innovative, with typical examples like the "sentence assembly method," which is a breakthrough in English teaching. It is also practical, easy to implement, and can effectively improve students' English proficiency while fostering their precious confidence. Whether it's the abundant high school English teaching materials, various English extracurricular reading materials, or classroom teaching in middle schools, the transmission of English can essentially be summarized as a "five-step process": ① Assigning vocabulary memorization; ② Having students read passages aloud in class; ③ Explaining and translating the text, then using a few words from the text to create sentences; ④ Extracting a few difficult sentences from the article for grammar analysis, or having students imitate the sentence patterns to create new sentences; ⑤ Assigning text memorization, doing exercises, and explaining answers in a case-by-case manner. Although some teachers adopt teaching styles like "relaxed and fun," "passionate and motivational," or "maniacal" to engage students, the substance remains the same—the teaching path still largely follows the above "five-step process." This "five-step process" teaching model cannot effectively improve students' reading and writing skills, and many students are thus forever in the realm of English. Before improving high school students, let's take college students as an example. Look at the current million college graduates—how many can write articles in English? How many can read mainstream American weeklies? This situation is embarrassing. In fact, if advanced training methods were adopted, a batch (not just a few) of high school students could significantly surpass the current English proficiency of college students, yet China has not yet produced a batch of high school students who have reached such a level (under the current teaching model, it's impossible). The reason for this embarrassing phenomenon lies in the four shortcomings of the current "five-step process" teaching model, which directly mislead high school students. This book will comprehensively correct these four shortcomings.