An Investigation On English Picture Book Teaching In Primary School For The Cultivation Of Innovative Thinking

Innovation is the soul of the nation’s progress.It is also an inexhaustible source of national prosperity.Developing students’ innovative thinking is an important way to implement quality-oriented education.The New English Curriculum Standards for Chinese Primary Schools and Junior Middle Schools has noted that English curriculum in primary schools and junior middle schools undertakes the task of cultivating students’ basic English literacy and developing their thinking ability and the task of improving students’ comprehensive humanistic quality.It shows the combination of instrumentality and humanism.The basic idea of curriculum is to pay attention to quality-oriented education and students’ development.It means that students’ ability of thinking should be concerned.Innovative thinking is the most important part of thinking.Therefore,developing students’ innovative ability through English courses in primary schools is important.Although many teachers have got some experience in developing students’ innovative abilities,they still meet some problems and find no solutions during their teaching process.According to information retrieval,many people do research on both innovative thinking and primary English teaching.But research on English picture book teaching and innovative thinking is hardly to find.There are few documents of analysis on it.And most of the documents related to it are from journals.In order to search out the problems and the causes of developing students’ innovative thinking during the English picture book teaching classes,this paper will try to analyze the data collected with a questionnaire issued among students and a questionnaire issued amongteachers from Grade4,Grade5 and Grade 6 in school A.To investigate the current situation of cultivating the four dimensions of students’ innovative thinking,the innovative thinking scale is used.To investigate English teachers’ attitude towards innovative thinking and their ways to cultivate students’ innovative thinking,the interview outline is used.This research is based on Discovery Learning Theory,Constructivism,Humanistic Theory and Multi-intelligences.It intends to find some picture book teaching strategies for current English teachers in primary schools.Through the detailed records of English picture book teaching and the interviews of English teachers,as well as the analysis of students’ questionnaire,we can find some problems.The first one is that the overall level of innovative thinking of students is not high.The second one is that the development of the four dimensions of students’ innovative thinking is uneven.The third one is that teachers have a strong awareness of cultivating students’ innovative thinking,but they have few methods.Therefore,this research presents some strategies of English picture book teaching.Teachers can use brainstorming,not-only-one-answer questions,and more related picture books to cultivate students’ divergent thinking.Teachers can use create situations to cultivate students’ imaginal thinking.Teachers can develop students’ ability of observation to cultivate students’ intuition.Teachers can design both individual work and group work to cultivate students’ logical thinking.Highlight the importance of developing students’ innovative thinking is to improve the core literacy of students.To seek out the strategies for English picture book teaching will show some directions for primary English teachers.Due to more innovative teaching and more innovative thinking,there are more innovations in our society.