Junior High School Bilingual Education In China-Problems & Suggested Solutions: A Case Study

With the quick step of economic globalization, China has been accepted as a member of WTO. On Aug. 8th, 2008, the Summer International Olympic Games were successfully held in Beijing, China, and the world EXPO Shanghai is coming soon. Our country calls for high quality talents with bilingual capabilities. This will place great demand on high school teaching. To realize socialist modernization, the first step is to modernize the people. For the students in junior high schools or even primary schools, they should have the ability to think critically, express themselves fluently, and learn knowledge quickly by using their bilingual capability. Therefore, cultivating the abilities of the students is becoming one of the hottest topics in education innovation.As part of the innovation and development of English teaching, bilingual teaching has attracted the attention of many high schools, which have put or are putting it into practice. These schools have their own teaching systems, which depend on the aspects of school size, teaching accomplishments, teaching methods, class composition and schooling evaluation. The experiences of these schools are worthwhile to learn from and use for reference.Bilingual teaching in China, especially in junior high schools, is still at its early stages and far from mature. In some schools, bilingual teaching has cost a lot of time but with very little effect, some schools lack teachers who can teach bilingual courses, and sufficient hardware for teaching, and some other schools, while publicizing their'bilingual teaching experiments', are actually involved in total English teaching. There are still a number of questions which need further discussions about the feasibility of Bilingual Education.This research is an experimental one in Bilingual School (SISU) in which the author works. In Bilingual School (SISU), bilingual education means teaching minor courses such as PE, biography, geography, etc in English. It takes into consideration the cases of other high schools, and discusses the theories, teachers, teaching materials and future of bilingual teaching, including some suggestions for the adoption of bilingual teaching.This thesis consists of five chapters. In Chapter One, the author will review and analyze the current situation of junior high School Bilingual Education in China. In Chapter Two, the author will introduce some important research results worldwide for a literature review of Bilingual Education in order to figure out the feasibility of Bilingual Education. In Chapter Three, the author will quote some of the research experiments to list some misunderstanding, or disadvantages in the Bilingual Education of China. Chapter Four is the continuation and extension of Chapter Three, the author will offer some practical suggestions to Bilingual Education in China on the basis of the research and different theory foundations as well as a case study in Bilingual School (SISU). Chapter Five draws some conclusions about bilingual education and some suggestions are proposed for further study.