The Study Of Grading And Progressive English Teaching In Secondary Vocational Schools

With the social development and the reform of enrollment in secondary vocational schools in recent years, the student number of secondary vocational schools increases greatly, but along with it is that the quality of students' sources descends, the constitution of students is getting more complicated, and the gap in student's learning proficiency is becoming greater. Besides, without the pressure of College Entrance Examination, they lack learning targets and motivation and are less interested in learning English. Therefore how to improve students' learning effect and the teaching efficiency of secondary vocational schools becomes a remarkable problem that vocational educators have to face and solve. At present, English teaching and assessment in most secondary vocational schools are carried out with the same teaching materials, teaching schedule and requirements. Even in a natural class, students' learning level and ability are different, and their capabilities of acquiring new knowledge are different as well. Teaching in this unified pattern, teachers are not able to give full consideration to students of different level proficiency. Students' individual differences are neglected most of the time. Many students lose interest and confidence in learning English. The contradiction between teaching and learning is getting more and more intensive. Some of the secondary vocational schools have begun the practice of grading and progressive teaching pattern in order to solve the problems.This thesis is based on second language acquisition theories and applied linguistic theories. Furthermore, psychology theory also plays an important role in it. These theories are used for writing the thesis and conducting the experiment. On the basis of analyzing students' sources, their features and the present English teaching situation in secondary vocational schools, the author proposes a few methods of stimulating students' interest and motivation and builds up student-centered classroom teaching by implementing grading and progressive teaching pattern. The experiment was carried out in Pharmaceutical Preparations Class 07181 of Hunan Pharmacy School. The students in the experimental class were classified into three levels according to the results of pre-test and the questionnaire investigation aiming at understanding students' motivation, interest and attitude toward English learning. The experiment was conducted from Feb. 2008 to July. 2008. Each of the teaching aspects including lessons preparing, designing, classroom activities and tasks, assignment and formative assessment was involved in the experiment. The results show that grading and progressive teaching pattern benefits English teaching in secondary vocational schools. It plays a significant role in raising students' interest and confidence for learning. The atmosphere and effect in the classroom teaching and examination results are improved. By implementing this teaching pattern, collective teaching and individual teaching are combined, thus the contradiction between students' individual differences and development and collective teaching is solved as well. This thesis also summarizes the problems and inadequacy found during the process of the experiment and proposes suggestions for further practice.