The Problems In Primary School English Teaching And Their Countermeasures

After entering 21st century, our country has become an incomparable huge English teaching country. English has been offered in more and more primary schools since the early 1990s. After the decision made by China's Ministry of Education of offering English course from Grade 3 in primary schools nationwide in China from county-level in the fall of 2001 was carried out step by step, the number of English learners and teachers has been nearly doubled. It aroused wide discussion of many experts and scholars in foreign language teaching and research fields. They paid close attention to it and held different opinions about offering English course in primary schools.As a matter of fact, no matter what kind of different opinion they hold, primary school English teaching is booming quickly. While at present, our country's economy develops not in equilibriums and we also lack experience in providing foreign language curriculum in primary sehoots. Especially the research basis is rather weak. Facing such a new thing, we should keep a cool mind.This study aims to do some research not only in theory but also in practice to find the existing problems in the offered English course in the primary schools and try to seek some countermeasures for the primary school English teachers, educators and curriculum standard's formulators for reference. The mainly underlying theoretical framework in this thesis is the Critical Period Hypothesis discussed by Rod Ellis in Understanding Second Language Acquisition. By referring to his arguments about age, the thesis seeks other four theories to support primary school foreign language teaching. Then according to James Dean Brown's overview of curriculum components, the study seeks to fred the existing problems from the four aspects, such as the teacher population. In order to guarantee the authenticity and practicability of the research, I made a survey of questionnaires on 300 primary school students from the key and general schools, questionnaires on 200 English teachers from different schools of different districts and counties in a primary school English teaching research seminar and interviews on some English researchers of teaching and research sections of the area.After analyzing the teachers' and students' answers to the questions in the questionnaires and the results of interviews, and then relating the curriculum designing theories to the survey results, I find the teacher population is the decisive factor to ensure the success of primary school English teaching. Also reasonable and practical materials in use should be compiled and chosen, and then a proper evaluating system should be established. Of course, another important factor, the student population, can't be neglected. Their active participation is the guarantee of any teaching project and students should be the center of the study. Due to the lack of time and the limits of my own study, I haven't done some research on the other aspects, such as English Curriculum Standard. Later I will go on with the study of primary school English and paying attention to it.Scanning from the overall situation, we can see that there are worries and delights at the beginning of offering English course in the primary schools during the teaching reforms in China. In one hand we should affirm the current-obtained achievements in the new-run curriculum reforms. At the same time we should also face the existing problems and the practical difficulties optimistically. We should absolutely believe that the primary school English would embrace a bright and splendid future under the great common concern and unified endeavor of all members in the society, especially all the education staff members.