Teacher And Student’s Role-exchange In Primary English Teaching: An Empirical Study

English, as one of the most important information carrier, has become the mostwidely used language in all areas of human life. It is quite evident that English, as asubject in primary school, plays an important role in compulsory education.With the continuous reform of the new curriculum, teaching model has beenoptimized. However, English teaching in primary school could not meet therequirements of the curriculum standard. With vocabulary and grammar still being thefocus in English teaching and learning, the development of students’ ability to useEnglish in daily communication is ignored and hindered to some extent. It is worthconsidering that how to teach English effectively to meet the requirements of thestandard curriculum, and guide students to master the knowledge actively andimprove their practical ability.The empirical study is conducted with the application of teacher and student’srole-exchange in primary English teaching according to the requirements of the newcurriculum standard of compulsory education in primary school (2011), based onhumanistic theory, constructivist learning theory and interaction theory. This paperattempts to answer the following two research questions:1. Can teacher and student’s role-exchange in primary English teaching improvestudents’ interest in English learning?2. Can teacher and student’s role-exchange in primary English teaching improvestudents’ achievements in English tests?The sample of this study is80students of Grade6in No.2Primary school ofShanxi Province Youyu County. We selected Class3as the experimental class, Class4as the control class. From mid February to mid July in2013, the researcher carried outa teaching experiment for more than4months. We designed some activities tostimulate students learning enthusiasm in consideration of the teaching contents andpersonalities of the students. The evaluation of effectiveness is based on aquestionnaire survey and two English tests before and after the experiment. With theanalysis of relevant data before or after the experiment, it is found that the applicationof role-exchanging of teacher and students in English teaching in primary schoolstimulated students’ initiative and enthusiasm and improved students’ communicativeability in English and all-round ability in real life. This research has provided practical guidance for the improvement of primary English teaching and the newcurriculum reform.This thesis also has some limitations: the students selected from a local primaryschool in the experiment is far from enough; the research is confined to the study ofstudents in a rather less-developed region, which can hardly be applied to the teachingin developed areas. Therefore, future study should be done in developed areas.