Research And Study Of English Learners' Underperformance In Rural Areas

In most China's rural areas, high school students can't perform in learning English as well as in learning other subjects or as well as the students in cities. People seldom have had a careful and thorough investigation about it. This article verifies its existence by a large amount of data analysis on the records of English tests, which are mainly taken from 3 sample schools. But why this phenomenon exists and how can we solve this problem? This paper attempts to make a tentative analysis of the reasons for the underachieving phenomenon and discusses the uniqueness of "backward students" in English learning. The research is based on the survey about students' learning strategy and teacher's teaching methods. The result of the study shows some possible causes to this phenomenon. First, the learning strategies of the students in rural area haven't been properly cultivated. Second, students' motivations of learning second language haven't been invoked or have been set in a negative way. Third, students' family member's education , social status and financial situation also exert deep influences on learning the language of English. From the perspective of teachers' roles, "backward" teaching approaches, erroneous attitude towards their own teaching career and students' study, and inadaptation to the new educational reform make the English teaching less successful than expected. In addition, the administrational policy in village school also obstacles the development of English learning, for example, the unequal admission policy blocks off the way for the excellent students to enroll at country schools. As indicated above, the article offers some possible solutions to this problem. First of all, we should emphasize the cultivation of learning strategies, especially in cognitive strategy and communicative strategy. Also, we must get rid of the stereotypical thought that country students can't learn English well. One more aspect has to be mentioned that the educational administrators should strengthen the policy support to the development of the English teaching, and set up a new assessment system to lead the school to offer more sustainable developing opportunities for English learning. In brief, we wish this article can bring some help to change the phenomenon of low effective English learning in rural areas.