Exploring High School English Teachers' Knowledge Structure In The New Curriculum Reform

The research aim of the thesis is to explore the knowledge structure of the English teachers and its effect on English teachers' teaching, then prove the necessity of teachers' mastery of the composite knowledge structure. The research question is: What is the composite knowledge structure and its influence on English teachers?To explore the knowledge structure of English teachers, the writer conducted a study in Zha Shui Middle School where she held the teaching practice. All the 20 English teachers in the school took part in the study. Based on the quantitative research methodology, the data are mainly transcripts of three types: questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation. The data are presented by two methods: recordings and questionnaires. Based on the study, the writer puts forward the challenges brought by the new curriculum reform, the knowledge necessary for English teachers, the factors affecting the teachers to acquire the necessary knowledge and the suggestions for English teachers to acquire the necessary knowledge.The thesis is composed of the following chapters: Chapter One, Introduction. It provides the significance of the thesis, highlighting the necessity of studying teachers' knowledge structure; Chapter Two, Literature Review. It introduces teacher thinking and teachers' explicit and tacit knowledge, and reviews some related researches; Chapter Three, Methodology. It outlines a questionnaire involved in the research process. Interview and classroom observations are adopted to investigate teachers' knowledge structure, especially tacit knowledge; Chapter Four, Results and Discussions. It presents the results of the study. At the same time, it has a further discussion on the results; Chapter Five, Conclusion. It presents the findings of the study and their implications for English teaching. Limitations of the present study and suggestions for further study are also provided.The quantitative research design used for this study has limitations in which the results can not be applied to other schools. The writer could not give a full description of the knowledge structure of every teacher due to the limited time. The conclusions made represent the researcher's interpretation of the data collected. The classroom observations, interviews and questionnaires present some difficulties and could be improved for future studies.