赵羽

Abstract:Nowadays, .ore and nore foreign languages sc:hoolsteaching .aterial. Shortly after its c:o.ing out in 2004,and students, sweeping the nation by stor~, rec:ognized asand private schools adopt FIM ast heir Englishit has gained great popularity a.ong teachersthe teniinator of New Com:ept Inglish.

中圖分类号：G633. 41

文献标识码：A

文章编号：1005-5312 (2020) 21-0183-03

Two years ago, our school also joined the greatarmy of EIM. As a teacher in a high schoolexperimenting with the book for two years, I've gotsome discoveries in the process of teaching.

一、What kind of a teaching material is ElM?

1. Who are the EIM intended for?

English in Mind is aimed at cultivating Englishabilities of the teenagers all around, who takeEnglish as a foreign language. The learners areassumed between 10 and 16, which is just the formingage of one's mind.

2. What's the learning system of EIM?

There are six levels for this series, from thebasic English to a level which makes it possible forthem to be admitted by most universities in an Englishcountry. Hence, EIM is a book which helps students tomeet the requirements from Al to Cl according toEuropean Contemporary Language Teaching System. It'san

international

book

with

comprehension,sVstematicness and science.

Besides, after finishing EIM4, students willprobably be able to reach 7.5 in an IYETS test. Withthis, they can easil meet the language requirementsof many worldknown universities.

3. What are the strengths of EIM?

As its name English in Mind, this book istargeting at developing a sense of English thinking.Although it seems obviously a challenging oIojective toachieve, this loook has set a practical path to it.Based on reading, EIM tries to train students allaspects by various imaginative and interesting topics,ranging from pains of growth to latest movies, fromconsole games to popular sports. In total, there are14 topics for each level. As for each topic, there are4 parts, namely reading

(sometimes listening),grammar,

vocabulary and writing.

And usuallvprereading part or postreading parts are involvedwith speaking.

What's more important, in the topics lie theculture in mind and literature in mind. Understandingthe culture helps them to catch the meaning betweenand behind the lines so that their moral qualitv canbe really promoted. And the latter enables teens toappreciate literal works of different types and timesas well as preparing them for reading originals in thefuture.

Last but not least, the topics could be mainlycategorized int0 3 types, namely Nature and Humans,Society and Individual, and the Ego. It perfectlycovers the main problems along one's growing ages andhelps them build healthy values on life and resolvepsychological pains during adolescence.

With the guidance of this book, what students cangain is not only the language and the culture, butalso an optimistic attitude towards life, which makesit an unparalleled teaching material recently.

二 .Can it prepare students to meet therequirements of Gaokao?

It goes without saying that this book is anoutstanding work and a combination of many people'shard work and efforts. However, every coin has twosides. What are the weaknesses of it? Let's have alook.

Among all the disadvantages, the fact that EIM ismainly designed for students with an attempt to studyoverseas is most concerned. When it comes to learnersaimed at Gaokao, it is a different matter.

In addition, the book is aimed at cultivatingstudents to use English in mind, and even to think inEnglish. It highlights thinking and speaking more thanreading and writing. Interestingly, these two are justwhat Gaokao thinks much of.

What ' s more,

although this book tries to educatestudents all round, the reading and grammar parts arerelatively simpler than those of Gaokao, which seemsnot be able to satisfv the students going for Gaokao.And, there is an inadequacy of listening exercise. InEIM 4, there are 14 units but only 5 listeningmaterials. While in Gaokao, listening are up t0 30scores, accounting for one fifth of the total scores.Therefore, good book as this material is, there is abig gap between it and Gaokao. How can the educatorsprepare Chinese students for the requirements of theentrance exam of Chinese universities? It's a problemworth thinking. And this inspired me to write thisarticle. And I will focus on the listening part in myarticle.

三.Measures to take

To reduce the gap and make the studentswell-prepared for the listening of Gaokao, thefollowing measures are useful and productive accordingto my teaching practice.

1. Problems analysis.

The listening part in EIM is similar to thereading part, which is aimed at comprehension.Questions in this section are about the understandingof the materials. And then come a few questions onfurther critical thinking or some culturalcomparisons.

On the other hand, listening exercise for Gaokaois mainly about the processing of information, whichis involved in some everyday English, such as goingshopping, going to the doctor's, inquiry about time,etc. In this part students' abilities to conclude, toinfer and to grasp the details are required.Therefore, some adjustment is highly needed.

2. Solutions.

(1) First, to transform some reading materialsinto listening ones to increase the rate of listeningexercise in the book.

For each passage, there is an mp3 for students tolisten to. The teachers can take good advantage ofthese mp3s to train the listening ability. After all,practice makes perfect. The more you listen, thebetter you will be accustomed to the Englishlinguistic environment. More importantly, most of mystudents don't have a good pronunciation of Englishwords, which contributes to the missing of informationduring listening. Listening to the standard Englishcan help them remember the standard pronunciation ofthe words.

Meanwhile, teachers can design some exerciseaccording to the standard of Gaokao, like the time,the location, the purpose, the attitude of the writerand so on, to make it match the standard of Gaokao.

For example, in EIM 4 0n page 102, the readingmaterial is about the reasons why Danish are veryhappy. Before reading, I asked the students to talkaloout the places where they feel happy, such as sandybeaches and tropical forests. Then they listened tothe first paragraph with books shut and answered thefollowing questions:

Where is the happiest country according to thetext?

Who are happier, the people in Canada or those inIceland?

Then I led the students to explore the reasons fortheir happiness.

These two questions do well in evaluatingstudents' understanding of the first paragraph. Notonly is it a good way to improve learners' Englishlistening skills, but also a good leadin for thereading following.

(2) Second, when it comes to some idiomaticexpressions, students may get puzzled.

For example, in the mock examinations for Gaokaoin 2016 0f Chengdu, listening 14, it goes:

Why does the man want to have a trip?

A. He hates the city.

B. He wants to get refreshed.

C. He has to use up his holiday.

The man says I really need to leave this town fora change and working day after day has worn me out.Obviously, this exercise is aimed to check students'vocabulary. They should master the meaning of"refreshed, use up, wear sb out ".

Similar exercises are in every test. Andvocabulary accumulation is always necessary in everyaspect of English study. Thus, after each listening,teachers can accumulate the similar expressions in thematerial and review them in daily teaching. It willbenefit students in their future tests. These are partof my conclusion.

●What reallv takes up占用 (时间),占据 (空间) iscoping with the kinds of things that always happenwhen people from the cities start walking onagricultural land.

●The one thing that gets me down不开心 is comingacross piles of cans and packets and other things thatpeople don't take home with them.

●I can't stand little dogs.容忍

●I dropped out of a writing class in college, andnow I regret it.退出

●Don't be too hard on yourself.对......严厉

●I think you could get by with a first edition.过

●I would be set up there for selling software.被

●You've put sticky tape all over it.胶带

●As a public relation manager, her daily job ismainly about dealing with the complaints抱怨 fromdissatisfied customers.

●make a lot of money: make good money

●You can't depend on public phones in this dayand age.

●checkout n.

●have something in common with sb

●packed lunch

●hand in/hand out, give in/out/up/away

●figure/work/sort out

● At that time I wanted to work in the field ofoverseas development and I needed to clock up sometime living abroad so that they would take meseriously.

●I understand you run in-house training coursesin word processing and databases, things like that.

● We've just taken on some new staff in ourdepartment.

● There'll be plenty of staff to attend to yourevery need.

●I'd like to say to those students who like theidea of travel-bv all means follow up any suitableopportunity, but don't expect it to be an easV choice.

●My father's salary doesn't go far.

● I've got a twothousanddollar need-basedscholarship.

●I'm also receiving money through the workstudvprogram.

●Basically, I'm excited by ideas and I can't waitto put them into action.

●I hope I can find a reasonably priced one here.

●When we met, we hit it off straightaway.

●I'm starting to get the picture.了解, 明白

●Who was in charge of money raising

●She took leave to see her mother in Europe.

●He must have been boiling in that coat.

●I don't really want to pick up a parttime job,what with my course load, dance and yoga classes.由于,

●How do I fit into this information與

● When the fog lifted in the afternoon, I waspleased to learn my friends had repaired my plane.

●It's just that our pies are out of this world.

● Watch out he doesn't trv to take advantage ofyou.

(3) Third, the most usual mistake is the exercisethat needs students to infer or calculate.

According to my teaching practice, the mistakerate for this kind of exercise accounts for 23%around.

As for calculating exercise, students should takesome notes while listening, especially the numbers.The habit of taking notes will help them to tackle theproblem later.

(4) Fourth, in all probability students makemistakes in the first a few exercises.

There are mainly two reasons. For one thing, thesedialogues will only be read once. Hence, if theirknowledge basic is too weak, it is too easy for themto miss them. For another, they should transform froma Chinese linguistic surrounding to the English oneimmediately, which is challenging for some students.Most of the time, the dialogue is over before theyrealize what is happening.

Therefore, before every listening, the teacher canplay a short English material to help students getinto the English world as soon as possible. It needn'tbe long, I or 2 minutes will do.

Before the important examinations, students canlisten to something English by themselves and ensurethey get immersed in it. It will reduce the mistakerate of Part I greatly.

Apparently, these solutions are still too generaland ambiguous. There is a lot to do for improvingEnglish listening ability and skills. However, thepurpose of this article is to remind the teachers onthe frontier not to rely on EIM completely and not toignore the specific situation of our country. And Ihope the educational practice in my teaching processcan be useful and meaningful for those who are workingon EIM somewhere on this planet.