Research On The Reform Of English Homework In Senior High School

In the modern education,students are encouraged to participate in teaching on their own initiative, make a thorough inquiry happily, take in new knowledge on their own. Students' independent character and autonomy should be put in the first place in their teaching. With the development of new English curriculum reform in China, English Curriculum Standards was approved by Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China in 2003. It also calls for fostering students' ability of using English synthetically in the phase of basic education by achieving the five curriculum goals: language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitude, learning strategies and cultural awareness. Therefore, teachers need to try their best to offer students relative language practice such as doing various types of English homework according to their cognitive levels and characteristics. Meanwhile, it is also important to assess the homework by adopting various strategies.Through theoretical and practical considerations of English homework, this thesis aims at the creative designing and assessment of English homework for senior middle school students according to the newly promulgated Senior Middle School English Curriculum Standards, trying to explore new learning strategies in English language teaching (ELT) in Chinese secondary schools and improve the quality of ELT. Absorbing the advanced educational theories, this thesis introduced Multiple intelligences(MI), Constructivism, and Task-based language teaching(TBLT) into the English homework and based it on the scientific principles which provide constructive and theoretical base for optimization of homework. Based on the survey of the status quo in senior middle school students' homework by the means of questionnaires and interviews, the thesis analyzes the typical problems and attempts to explore their origins, putting forward the necessity of research in the context of new curriculum. According to the modem educational theory and the idea of new-curriculum, The thesis studies the design and optimization on English homework. In this thesis, the relationship between new-curriculum and homework, the connotation, the function, the features of Englsih homework are explained in detail. And then, the exploration of English homework has been a focus of the thesis, with respects to the targets, contents, types and assessment. In the light of students' development, the thesis lays stress on the multidimensional objectives, rich contents, and the varity, opening of homework's design and assessment. Four types of English homework based on senior high school English course requierment are presented: knowledege-oriented homework, skill-development-oriented homework, thinking-cultivation-oriented homework and application-oriented homework. Many examples are presented in each type as well. Subsequently, new ideas and principles of assessment and a series of strategies of assessing homework are suggested.Finally, positive effect has been briefly discussed and reflection and prospection have been stated as well. This thesis, in some sense, concentrates more on the practical application rather than theoretical elaboration, so it needs examining and perfecting in teaching practice, especially for the sake of its limitations, which have been put forward at the end of thesis.