A Survey On The Current Situation Of English Curriculum Reform In Guangxi Junior High Schools

In the fast-changing 21st century and with the context of economic globalization and knowledge-based economy, the competition in politics, economy, science and technology lies its root in the competition and advantage in human resources, which requires the educational reform. As the blueprint of the educational reform, the curriculum reform is unanimously becoming the focus. Since 1990s, a lot of countries have conducted curriculum reforms one after another. The new round of curriculum reform in basic education in China was initiated in 38 pilot zones at national level in 2001. As a part of this curriculum reform, the English curriculum reform, under the guidance of the English Curriculum Standards (hereinafter the Standards), has been implemented in pilot schools at all levels. In Guangxi, much concern is given to the issue whether the schools, teachers or students can meet the requirements of the Standards since the development of English language teaching (ELT) in Guangxi is relatively unsatisfactory. As the Standards will be implemented in all the starting grades in primary and junior high schools from the autumn semester in 2005, we conduct a survey on the current situation of English curriculum reform in Junior high schools in Guangxi for the purpose of knowing both the achievements and problems of the reform and giving some suggestions for its better popularization. This present thesis includes 5 chapters: Chapter one shows the backgrounds and the general picture of the curriculum reform and states the objective of this present research. Chapter two introduces the general goals of the curriculum reform in basic education in China and the specific requirements of the Standards in terms of the nature and objectives of the English curriculum, English curriculum instruction, English curriculum resources and the assessment system. Chapter three is the focused part of this thesis in which the situation of the implementation of the survey is shown and the data are analyzed. The students of Grade 2003, who take the correspondence program in the College of Foreign Studies of Guangxi Normal University, participated in the survey. Since they are, in fact, teachers or administrators in secondary schools in Guangxi, their answers to the survey, to some extent, reflect the current situation of the English curriculum reform in Guangxi. After the analysis of the data, it is shown that some achievements have been gained in the following aspects: 1) teachers'notion of the curriculum is updated; 2) better understanding of the overall goal of the English curriculum and the goals of different bands is achieved; 3) much attention has been paid to affective factors; 4) much emphasis has been laid on the training of learners'strategies and cultural awareness; and 5) teachers can constantly update their knowledge by reading academic publications and reflecting on teaching. However, there are still some problems: 1) the educational objective of a school is inappropriate; 2) teachers lack knowledge of the 3-level curriculum system; 3) the classroom is still teacher-centered to some extent; the task-based approach is not well used; the content of strategy training is not rich enough and the ways are a bit dull; the situation of the use of modern technology, the development of the extracurricular activities and elective courses is unsatisfactory; 4) the new textbooks are too difficult for teachers to use, and teachers cannot well develop curriculum resources; 5) teachers is lacking in the ability to do research; and 6) the assessment system is far from adequate. Aiming at solving the above-mentioned problems, some suggestions are given in Chapter four. Those for implementing the reform are: 1) offering teachers training programs on the Standards and the reform; 2) adjusting the construction and content of the curriculum; 3) speeding up the reform of the assessment system; 4) implementing the 3-level curriculum system; 5) giving enough support; and 6) paying attention to the urban-rural educational differences. Those for improving the pre-service English teacher education are: 1) setting up proper teaching concept; 2) adjusting the existing curriculum; and 3) setting up new educational models. The last are the suggestions for improving the in-service English teacher development: 1) improving correspondence education and short-term training programs and 2) promoting reflective teaching and action research. The last part is a brief conclusion. In spite of the limitations of the questionnaire and the participants, the survey does show a general picture of the reform carried on currently in Guangxi. The present thesis provides some suggestions for better implementation of the reform.