II. The Definition and Principles of Lead-in

2.1 Definition of Lead-in

   For the concept of classroom teaching, there is no clear authoritative conclusion. Liu Xianguo mentioned in Lecture Art that in the classroom teaching, lead-in plays a role that induces the students’ interest and passion in learning new knowledge (65). Shao Xifang said, “lead-in” is also called “Introduction”, it is the generic terms of all teaching activities during three to five minutes at the beginning of a classroom between teachers and students (76). Based on the different opinions of different scholars on this issue and through referring to a large number of relevant literature this paper concludes:    the lead-in of new lessons in English teaching is also called “Introduction”, it is the generic terms of all teaching activities with several minutes at the beginning of a classroom between teachers and students. “Guide” refers to teachers consider teaching content as the goal and use a clever way to focus on the students’ attention, stimulate the students’ desire for knowledge and guide the students to enter the learning state. “Into” is to guide students to the subject of learning, let the students capture the idea of teaching content from the guide language and form the internal factors for students’ learning to help students clear the purpose of learning and accept the inspiration and guidance of teachers actively, so teachers and students can communicate happily.

2.2 Principles of Lead-in

   Lead-in, as an essential part of classroom teaching, must be integrated into the classroom teaching. From the specific behavior of lead-in, the final implementation will not be same if the content, the form and the purpose of introduction are different. But if we look at it from a general point of view, there are some general principles to be followed in the design of the introduction. No matter how colorful the form and method of introduction are, all of them are based on a certain principle.

   (1) Interesting

   The starting point of teaching is to stimulate students’ interest and desire to learn, there is a archaism: people who knows it better than who works on it, who works on it not as good as who loves it. Lead-in should make students feel the class is interesting, maximize the interest and curiosity of students, and stimulate students to acquire new knowledge of desire, so that the teacher can lay a good emotional atmosphere for the new lesson.

   Every English teacher in primary school awakens that it is not possible to make trouble in class when the students are interested in a class and participate in classroom activities. Some experienced teachers realize that those students who have been diagnosed with a lack of attention can invest in activities or tasks for a long time, if they feel that an activity or task is interesting. Therefore, the key to lead-in is to select the interesting material, so as to stimulate the students to produce enough interest, and transfer their attention to the classroom activities.