On The Main Factors Affecting Students' English Learning At Primary And Secondary Schools

At present, especially after the successful hold of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China comes into a new era of reform and opening up.It is urgent to cultivate people's strong communicative competence in foreign languages. At the same time, it is always an ultimate aim of English teaching to train students'strong abilities of expression, and is also one of essential contents of enhancing students'overall qualities.However, it is only in recent twenty years that our country's scholars begin the study of second language acquisition and foreign language teaching. Most of the foreign language teaching methods and teaching theories of our country are based on introducing or simply remodeling from those of western countries.In a sense, the outcomes of many language studies fail to guide the language teaching systematically and efficiently, which has become a big bottleneck in our English teaching.Currently, the phenomenon of time-consuming and inefficient learning is very serious in English teaching of our country. Many students can not read English books or English news smoothly after more than ten years'English study, neither can they communicate with foreigners in English fluently, therefore, the phenomenon of "dumb English" needs to be solved urgently.Since 2001,according to the provision of National Ministry of Education, most students have begun to learn English from primary schools, which is also a critical period for them to prepare for further study. Unfortunately, owing to kinds of reasons, there are still a lot of problems in our country's English teaching at the stage of elementary education, which impede their English learning to go on the track of sound progress.In recent year's study, most scholars have mainly focused on the situation of English teaching and learning in big or middle cities, while the studies in countryside and small towns are relatively insufficient. But due to the fact that most young students live in countryside and small towns, the study and analysis on them can better reflect the main factors affecting students'English learning. In order to get the first-hand materials,the author made a survey on the current situation of English learning at primary and secondary schools by questionnaires,whose subjects are mainly the teachers and students from countryside and small towns.They came from six primary schools and four secondary schools of four areas.In the end,227 questionnaires were collected.By analyzing the data, the survey reveals some main problems existing in current English teaching of primary and secondary schools, for example, students'interests in learning English decline after they enter middle schools from primary schools,and they even begin to hate English or lack motivations of learning English; the teachers do not have high professional qualities,especially those in the primary schools,most of whom do not major in English; their teaching methods are monotonous,and they lack initiative mind of doing teaching research; schools are not well equipped; the textbooks in primary schools are various;and the number of students in one class is too large and so on. Especially by comparing the current situation of primary schools with that of secondary schools, the thesis reveals the profound influence of non-intellectual factors and teachers'qualities on present students'English learning at the stage of elementary education.In the end, according to the problems showed in the survey, the author reflects on the English teaching problems at primary and secondary-schools, and brings forward some suggestions and strategies based on some linguistic theories, hoping to help teachers improve their English teaching, and enhance the efficiency of students' English learning at elementary education stage.