The Study On Status And Affecting Factors Of English Curriculum Implementation In Primary School

For the purpose of exploring the primary school English curriculum implementation status and its affecting factors, this study is based on The English Curriculum Standards and analyses the English Curriculum implementation status from two aspects: the teaching of primary school English and the students’ academic achievement.The analysis of the classroom teaching is focused on how the Standards’ requirements on it is translated in the real life situation and its affecting factors. Focusing on the students’ academic achievement level prescribed in the Standards, the analysis of this aspect studies the level, status and affecting factors of the implementation of primary school English curriculum from the perspective of whether the individual student’s academic achievement is above, matches, or is below the prescribed level. The study attempts to present a comprehensive reflection of the primary school English curriculum implementation process, level and results, by means of combining the process with the results.The classroom teaching evaluation focuses on the teacher’s and the student’s performances in different activities and at different teaching and learning stages, comprehensively analyses the “teaching” and the “learning” behavior and effects at different stages, and studies the characteristics of the primary school classroom English teaching. The study creates its observation scale based on The English Curriculum Standards. In the “Basic situation of classroom teaching” section, it mainly deals with the teacher’s classroom teaching practice, focusing on teaching objectives, contents, process, question-raising and the curriculum resource development and utilization. In the “Classroom teaching effects” section, it employs the five objectives of the student development prescribed in The English Curriculum Standards as its basic dimensions and focuses on the students’ development status from the teacher-student interaction perspective. The results show that the teacher’s goal setting is comprehensive and practical; selection and organization of teaching contents exhibits high level of integrity, but lacks differentiation; teaching methods are appropriate and form typical combinations; question-raising mainly consists of close-ended questions, supplemented with open-ended questions; curriculum resource development is diverse in type and the utilization is appropriate. Therefore, different dimensions of the student’s comprehensive ability to use the language develop in such classrooms by supporting one another.The academic achievement evaluation examines the student’s learning results from multiple aspects and some characteristics of the primary school English academic achievement. The academic achievement evaluation adopts the quantitative research method to determine the primary school English academic achievement status. The author creates the test paper for The Primary School English Academic Achievement Test according to the content standard and the performance standard of the Curriculum Standards, and selects the test results of the sixth grade primary school students in different cities of J Province as the object for analysis and research. In order to ensure the validity of its results, the student academic achievement evaluation of this study focuses on three dimensions: language knowledge, language skills and cultural awareness. Overall, the average total score the students got from the test is 83.2807. The test result distribution is relatively concentrated- 69.15% of the students scored above the average, with 9.49% of the students getting a score of 93. Specifically, the students got correct 90.05% of the questions of the cultural awareness dimension, 81.45% the language knowledge dimension, and 80.68% the language skill dimension. Generally speaking, the students achieved high level academic achievement in English, with a good grasp in the cultural awareness dimension and relative weakness in the language knowledge dimension. From the correlation perspective, among the three dimensions of language knowledge, language skills and cultural awareness, the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. Moreover, in the language knowledge dimension, among the four aspects of grammar, vocabulary, function and topic, the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. In the language skill dimension, between the reading comprehension and the writing skills, the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. At the same time, between the reading comprehension skill and the English vocabulary and cultural awareness, the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level, and between the writing skill and the English vocabulary, grammar and cultural awareness, the correlation is also significant at the 0.01. Therefore, the three dimensions and different aspects within the dimensions are all inter-promoting and inter-supportive.In order to get a clear idea of the factors affecting the primary school English curriculum implementation, the study refers to previous research and carries out its analysis in four aspects, including the program design at the state level, its adoption on the local level, its promotion at the school level, and its implementation(classroom teaching) at the individual teacher level. From the curriculum program perspective, the study suggests that the revised curriculum program is rather clear and complete, although some parts of it are still hard to understand or misleading to the teachers. But through training or teaching practice, the teachers can gradually understand and accept the concept, objectives and content of the curriculum program. From the teacher perspective, the study suggests that the low quality of primary school English teachers severely restricts the curriculum implementation. The teachers’ English-as-an-instrument philosophy changes gradually in practicing the new curriculum, while the humanistic nature philosophy gradually gets the teachers’ consent and is practiced to some extent. Meanwhile, the teachers are under great pressure in implementing the curriculum, which makes it important for expert teachers to assume important roles in promoting the curriculum implementation. From the school perspective, the study suggests that the school course arrangement is under the influence of the English curriculum evaluation in that the schools take some measurements to support the professional development of the teachers during the course of the new English curriculum implementation. In order to enrich the language environment students need for English learning, the schools organize student activities to support the teaching of English. From the external environment perspective, the administrative departments promote the new primary school English curriculum with conflict and hesitation; the parents’ understanding of the nature of English learning is still instrument- and rationality-oriented, with some regional difference though; and the release of the entrance examination pressure lays an insurmountable obstacle for the implementation of the new primary school English curriculum.Overall, the implementation of the primary school English curriculum in our country is encouraging, which is reflected in the following: the three-dimensional objective receives widespread concern in primary school English teaching, which is well reflected in the teaching process, and the five aspects of the student’s comprehensive ability to use the language develop through mutual support, resulting in the sixth graders’ academic achievement in English basically meets the requirement of the Standards. However, many restricting factors also exit, among which the most prominent are the quality of the primary school English teachers and the evaluation mechanism of the primary school English teaching. Therefore, in order to further promote the implementation of the primary school English curriculum, the author puts forward the following suggestions: the primary school English teaching evaluation mechanism needs to be improved; more detailed subject-specific teaching guidance outlines need to be developed besides The English Curriculum Standards; a professional skill standard for primary school English teachers needs to be introduced so as to regulate the appointment of primary school English teachers and improve the overall quality of the teaching faculty.