On how to improve China’s primary school English education---开题报告

In terms of primary school English education, there are many previous in-depth researches about current background and various methods of primary English teaching. After the dissertation carries out its research background and status quo of the topic, it will then discuss two major arguments and methods of improvement on China’s primary school English teaching. In addition, this dissertation will also give some recommendations from new perspectives on realization of promoting primary school English teaching efficiency.

As Dai Weidong (2001) asserts, the mainly existing problems of the current primary school English teaching lie in three aspects: the generalization tendency in teaching content, unilateralization in teaching method, and a lack of flexibility during teaching process. Dong Weidan (2011) concludes that only by ensuring a highly efficient English class, can the quality of primary English teaching be guaranteed. And in order to achieve success of English teaching, it is necessary to stimulate students' interest and improve the ability of students. However, due to the complex process of teaching, there is so far not an omnipotent teaching method yet. Therefore, from Jiao Xiuli’s (2009) perspective, when it comes to primary students’ features of poor consciousness, passive learning ability, and low stability of attention on class, the teachers, however, should strengthen and promote their proper adoption of teaching methods so as to improve students' interest and enthusiasm in learning. At the same time, teachers should consciously compare the merits of various teaching methods from which to select the practically appropriate method which is suitable for students.

The dissertation will go through two crucial categories of methods on improvement of primary school English education: the game-playing teaching method and the situational teaching method.

From perspectives of Guevara and Ordonez (2013), having fun is the nature of children and young students. It enables to attract students’ concentration to participate in the learning process by proper integration of teaching and game-playing. There are a wide range of teaching games, not only including traditional games, such as Gesturing and Guess, but also containing some advanced use of software to create games. Through combination with multimedia, teachers can create a realistic interactive English learning environment for students, so that they can percept and learn English by themselves during game playing process. Li Lijuan (2013) indicates that psychologically speaking, students' attention in a particular subject or event can only be lasting for a few minutes or so, less than 20% that of an adult. Therefore, during a English class in primary school, the students will get brain fatigue very soon, resulting in thinking fatigue and inability to concentrate on study. While, with the vivid and intuitive features of educational games, they can positively enhance students' concentration on class, thereby improving the quality of teaching and learning through the impacts from visual, auditory, tactile and emotional experience of games. In Li Yuan’s (2008) research, although the game application in primary school English is widely used, teachers however should select games of interest, and in consistency with the English teaching syllabus; also, they should arrange the rational time of game playing in order to accomplish the objectives of English teaching and improve students' grades and quality.

To mention situational teaching, it’s a method that is based on teaching content and objectives, as well as cognitive and mental development of students. As Cao Yan and Li Hong (2012) put it, teachers can let students perceive, understand, practice and master the language under contextual situation, thus ultimately achieve a cultivation of language skills and application ability through real classroom activities in creating teaching situation, and stimulating students' emotional experience and enthusiasm in learning. The situational teaching as a teaching method, in the statement of Perin (2011), was created in the Britain in the 1920s, with an emphasis on teaching in a meaningful or simulated situation. In the 1950s France initially appeared an audiovisual teaching method which extensively adopted slides, films and other equipments used to create a variety of language situations, and organize rehearsals; thus greatly enriched the situational teaching methods. In 1970s, there appeared a functional approach that proposed language proficiency of students as the objective and purpose of foreign language teaching and the context as a prerequisite for communication activities. In China, the situational English teaching method began in the 1920s. At that time, Mr. Zhang Shiyi was first generation of experts in foreign language teaching methodology of China. And he put forward:" In the actual teaching, principles should be applied to English teaching scenarios, and the phonograph, slides, movies should be taken full advantage of in order to create a situational mode."

In the research conducted by Feng Li, Zhang Zuoling and Yang Yangang, situational method is based on the guidance to accumulate perceptional materials for students, emphasizes to inspire students' thinking, and concentrates on using language as a tool to train students. Features of primary school students’ thinking are majorly reflected in images and link experience with perception. Moreover, the life-oriented feature of situational teaching method, in Wang Menglan’s (2011) opinion, makes it easy to get students start from perception to obtain thinking training. The situational English teaching can be divided into three types, according to Cao Yan and Li Hong (2012). (1)  Physical situations, for instance: English teachers can bring fruits, toys, and other items in needs of teaching into the classroom, so that students can directly perceive, and are easy to accept and understand. (2) Stimulated scenarios, such as: picture reproduction, music implementation, role playing, etc, from which the students can link their real experience accumulated in daily life, start an association and gain actual perception in front of the images. (3) Imagining situations and inference making, from which the students can develop language skills as well as imagination at the same time.

以上为文献综述，下面两段属于本^范文做出的其他改进措施

Additionally, this dissertation will demonstrate and propose some new perspectives and recommendations.

On one hand, it is hard to say whether English classes in primary school can definitely achieve the expected objectives; in addition to the proper adoption of teaching methods, the establishment and development of a high-quality English teaching teams of primary school poses more importance. Therefore, the schools should train a large number of qualified English teachers; in the meantime, on-job training and self-improvement of primary English teachers should also be highlighted and encouraged. If what the teachers impart to students is not normative with wrong pronunciation rules, or the teachers themselves do not even comprehend laws of language teaching and psychology of students, then they will likely to eliminate the initiative and enthusiasm of young students. On the other hand, just as the famous saying goes: give a hungry man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and he will feed himself for lifetime, teachers should be conscious of giving guidance on the students’ learning methods from the beginning, and help them timely review in accordance with memory laws.

                    Outline

Abstract

1 Introduction

2 Current situations

3 Teaching characteristics

4 Measures to improve primary school English education in China

  4.1 Game-playing teaching method

  4.2 Situational teaching method

  4.3 Other perspectives on improvement

4.3.1 Establishment of high-quality English teaching teams

4.3.2 Guidance on students’ learning and memorizing methods

5 Conclusion

References

                     References

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