Factors Influencing Students' Integration Into English Classrooms in Ecologically Fragile Environments: An Analysis

Introduction

The term “ecology” refers to the dynamic equilibrium relationship established by the interaction between organisms and the living environment in the natural environmental system. The 21st century is the century of ecology. The application fields of ecology have extended from natural sciences to social sciences, and even to the field of education. Lawrence Cremin, dean of the Columbia Normal University Normal School in the United States, proposed the concept of “educational ecology” in his representative work Public Education as early as 1976. He believes that based on ecological principles, various phenomena and causes that occur in education can be studied and explained, in order to grasp the development of laws of education (Joe et al.,2017). Educational ecology uses ecological methods to study the laws of education and human development. Focusing on ecological balance, environment and adaptation, population distribution and composition, interpersonal relations, and other issues, it attempts to establish a reasonable ecological environment inside and outside the school, improve teaching efficiency, and promote the healthy growth of the young generation. Focusing on education from an ecological perspective is actually a way of thinking that allows us to re-examine education and focus on solving the fundamental problems of education. Undoubtedly, when we use ecological theory to study the fundamental issues of education, the final focus should be on classroom teaching, which is the terminal goal of education. “Ecological classroom” is a classroom teaching model that draws on some basic concepts in ecology, fully utilizes ecological environmental conditions, continuously adjusts the relationships between various factors, and makes them tend to balance, unity, affinity, and harmony (Mliless & Larouz, 2018).

At present, most English classes in ecologically fragile areas are taught using multimedia, which brings certain conveniences to English classroom teaching, such as making the teaching content more intuitive and providing a pleasant classroom atmosphere. Teachers can use multimedia-rich materials to let students learn more knowledge. However, in our actual teaching process, there are often some problems with the use of multimedia equipment, such as when the projector’s display is unclear or not displayed at all, and the computer sound system fails. If the teacher does not carefully check whether the multimedia can work normally before class, or the teacher is not proficient in the use of multimedia equipment, it will inevitably occupy the normal class time and affect the normal teaching. In addition, we also found that multimedia teaching will limit teachers’ on-the-spot performance to a certain extent, because in most cases, teachers just present the courseware content to students step by step (Maxwell et al., 2017).

In addition, the number of English classes has increased sharply, and large class teaching has become the mainstream of the public English teaching model. There are at least 60 or 70 people in a teaching class, and some even reach more than 100 people. The lectures are usually held in large classrooms. Due to the large number of people and the large classrooms, many problems emerge, such as students skipping classes, arriving late, and leaving early. Some even talk, wander, sleep, and play with their phones in the classroom, but teachers find it difficult to constrain the behavior of each student, causing great difficulties in classroom management. Obviously, such a teaching environment will inevitably affect the normal teaching activities (Getie, 2020).

Most of the students in English classes in areas with fragile ecological environment come from rural mountainous areas. Students have differences in intelligence, personality, interests, etc., and their English learning experience and English proficiency are uneven. After entering the classroom, each student’s learning motivation and learning attitude are also different. Individual differences bring many difficulties to teaching, reflected in classroom goal setting, teaching schedule arrangement, teaching activity design, and other aspects. In a relatively unified arrangement it is often difficult to take into account the levels of all students. Students with good language foundation think that the breadth and depth of knowledge they have learned is not enough, while students with weaker language foundation have the problem of not being able to keep up (Mohamadi, 2018).