The Development Of School-based English Curriculum Oriented By Cultivating Core Competency

In April 2014,Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening the Curriculum Reform and Implementing the Fundamental Tasks of Cultivating Moral Talents issued by the Ministry of Education proposed that the development and construction of core competency system for student development should be taken as the key to promote the further development of the curriculum reform,so as to promote the development of education.Since school-based curriculum is the main force of curriculum reform,many schools actively construct a school-based curriculum system suitable for development of students' core competency in response to the call of the country.As the only relatively mature curriculum reform school in Heze City,Cao County No.1Junior Middle School has been at the forefront of curriculum reform research since its establishment.After a long period of exploration,the existing school-based English curriculum system has been formed.However,after consulting the school-based curriculum materials and investigating the students,the author found that there are many shortcomings in the current English school-based courses offered by the school: less variety(mainly only one or two),more formality(generally in the form of film),insufficient class hours,and teacher's little understanding of English core competency(letting alone whether the course can improve students' English core competency).Moreover,there are relatively few researches on the construction of school-based curriculum system based on core competency,which shows a tendency of emphasizing theory but neglecting practice.So it is necessary to explore how to promote the implementation of core competency in the construction and implementation of school-based curriculum.Therefore,the study takes 51 students from Class 4,Grade 2 of Cao County No.1 Junior Middle School as the research subjects for a semester of research.The author designs an English school-based course oriented to developing students' core competency,so as to achieve the purpose of improving students' English core competency and solve their problems in Englishlearning.In order to achieve the above research objectives,this study sets the following three research questions:1.What is the current situation of the school-based English curriculum development? How about the cultivation of students' English core competency?2.Can the school-based English curriculum meet the students' needs?3.What are the ways to improve the school-based English curriculum system?Based on the theories of Constructivism,Humanistic Learning Theory,Schwab's Practical Curriculum Theory and Stenhouse's Process Model,this study uses questionnaire,interview and classroom observation to investigate the students' English core competency before and after the implementation of the new school-based English curriculum.The purpose of this study is to achieve the following goals through the new school-based English curriculum developed by the author:(1)develop students' English core competency;(2)improve and perfect the existing school-based English curriculum system of the author's school and form a new system;(3)guide other teachers to learn from and continue to improve the system.The results show that: firstly,the existing school-based English curriculum has the following problems:(1)The teachers who offer school-based courses don't know enough about the English core competency;(2)The existing English school-based courses in the author's school are few in variety,too formalistic and unable to meet the needs of students without feedback;(3)It is difficult to cultivate students' English core competency through the existing school-based English Curriculum;(4)Parents are not satisfied with the school-based English curriculum.Secondly,through the new school-based English curriculum designed by the author,students' English core competency has been comprehensively improved,which is mainly reflected in the following aspects: students' class participation has increased significantly;students' learning interest,oral expression ability,cross-cultural awareness and thinking quality are significantly improved;and parents and students' needs have been fully met.Finally,the author summarizes how to improve the school-based English curriculum system: 1.Add the original types of English school-based courses to comprehensively improve students' English core competency and maintain their long-term interest in learning;2.Change the disadvantagesof the original school-based curriculum that only has input and no output and encourage students to increase output by means of funny dubbing,drama performances,storytelling,and film reviews while watching videos,so as to comprehensively improve their English core competency;3.Teachers should carefully design the teaching plan according to the learning situation before class,and write the curriculum summary in time after class.After the completion of all the courses,by watching the course record with the principal and the other teachers,teachers should gather the valuable experience of all parties to form a new school-based English curriculum,in order to improve the existing school-based curriculum system;4.Document the new school-based curriculum system in order to provide reference for other teachers and continue to improve.This research is conducive to solving the problems existing in the school-based curriculum construction of the author's school and promoting the improvement of students' core competency.It also has certain theoretical and practical significance for promoting the construction of school-based curriculum system oriented to the cultivation of English core competency.However,there are also some objective factors that may affect the effect of the experiment,for example,some abilities in English core competency can not be cultivated in a short time,so the changes before and after the course may not be significant.It hopes that these problems can be avoided as much as possible in the future research.