Theoretical & Practical Research Into English Activity Curriculum Of High Schools

It is a difficult and necessary task to reform the traditional classroom teaching and improve one's communicative competence of foreign language in order to meet the needs of social and individual development as well as to embody the practical feature of foreign language teaching. As to the English teaching in high schools, under the great pressure of entering into higher schools, it is also a tough task to both teach the knowledge and train the skills in the limited class hours.Based on the European and American experience of foreign language teaching, together with the consideration of Chinese real situations, opening 'English Activity Curriculum' in high schools is one of the effective methods to train one's language communicative competence. The article deals with the theoretical and experimental researches about 'English Activity Curriculum' in a high school, which aims to create a good atmosphere for language learning, to increase the chances for the learners to practice their language, to strengthen their interests in learning foreign language and to improve their oral communicative competence through a lot of language input and output activities.The researches about 'English Activity Curriculum' are based on those of 'Subject Curriculum', 'Extra-curriculum Activities' and 'Activity Curriculum'. The first two are the different forms of the subject structure, which are shown in the course table. But to the 'Activity Curriculum' and 'Extra-curriculum Activities', the latter is the predecessor of the former, and the former is the result of curricularizing the latter. 'Subject Curriculum' focuses on teaching the. systematic knowledge. 'Extra-curriculum English Activity' lays more importance on strengthening learners' interests and enriching their after-class life. 'Activity Curriculum' places emphases on training the oral communicative competence of the learners.'English Activity Curriculum' has the features of 'English subject' and'Extra-curriculum Activity'. Because of lack of the systematic and perfect introductions about 'English Activity Curriculum', this article has done some theoretical and practical researches on it.The theoretical researches include not only the researches about the origin and development of 'Activity Curriculum', but also the theoretical bases of education and psychology as well as linguistics. And then, the article talks about the distinctions and relations among them. In addition, this article also talks about the notion, features and functions of 'English Activity Curriculum'. As to its curriculum system, the researches include the theories on its teaching aims, teaching contents, teaching forms, teaching principles, teaching models and teaching evaluation.The experimental researches are about applying the above theoretical results to the practical experiment. By opening this curriculum in the experimental class regularly and analyzing the data, the conclusion can be reached that this curriculum is helpful to increase the understandable foreign language input, provide more opportunities for foreign language learners to practice, strengthen learning interests, create a real and good atmosphere for English learning. As a result, the oral communicative ability of foreign language can be improved much.'English Activity Curriculum' is more suitable to our foreign language teaching and more helpful to improve the oral English level of those high school students who are short of self-controls. It is a new reform in English curriculum structure of high schools and has the theoretical and practical significance.