The Practice Of The English Optional Course In Senior School

The Optional Course first appeared in the USA 200 years ago. But it was not until the 1980s that China started the course. During the first years it was neglected by most schools due to China's testing system. In 2003 China Ministry of Education issued "the National English Curriculum Standards", in which the Optional Course is demanded, aiming at carrying out quality education and creating more chances to practise English. Also, the Optional Course in the standards is supposed to motivate students' interest in learning English as well as to provide a variety of subjects to choose from by students. In this way, students' personality will be greatly developed.The Young Masters Programme was carried out as an optional course in my school during the period from February to June in the year of 2004. This environmental programme sponsored by China and Sweden was carried out via Internet Students were supposed to team environmental knowledge and preventive strategy in this programme. It combined Task-based Teaching &Leaming and Cooperative Learning as teaching and learning methods.A survey conducted by SEPA (State Environmental Protection Administration of China) shows clearly that YMP programme has greatly affected students. Needless to say, students get much environmental knowledge, and their environmental awareness is strengthened. Their English abilities are also improved after the progamme, including the enlargement of vocabulary, reading skills and cultural awareness. Students' communication ability is strengthened too, for YMP programme is a process of cooperation. Moreover, they get much scientific knowledge and scientific spirits after many times of field investigation.Of course, there exist several problems when the YMP programme was being carried out as an optional course, such as: the slow speed of the Internet, the limitation of the YMP materials. We must take the students' learning burden into consideration when we carry out the YMP. So it's important for us to make a detailed plan before we carry out an optional course.There are six chapters in this essay. Chapter 1 states the development of the Optional Course in the world. The relationship between the optional and the required course is also discussed in Chapter 1. The second chapter slates the necessity of the optional course in our country. Chapter 3 is about the Young Master Programme. It tells us why we choose it, what it is, how it was carried out in our school. Chapter 4 is detailed in the result of the programme. As we can find out, studente1 English abilityis greatly improved, as well as scientific awareness, learning style agd information technology ability. Also the programme makes our school much better-known in the local city. There were some difficulties while the programme was being carried out and they were described in the fifth chapter. Chapter six is a brief conclusion of the essay.It is an attempt for us to carry out the Young Masters Programme and I hope we will be more experienced when other optional courses are carried out in our school.