Study On Reflective Teaching Of English Teachers In Junior High Schools Of Henan Province

With the globalization and modernization of economy, the holding of the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo in China had a great impact on the spread of English; English plays an increasingly important role. Along with the rising importance of English, how to improve the English teachers' quality has become the focus of attention. In the 1980s teacher education swept through the European and American countries and reflective teaching was praised by the teaching profession. It emphasizes that the process of teachers' professional development should be with themselves as resources, lead teachers to take their professional knowledge and practical experience as basic starting point, discover a problem in the teaching practice , explore ways of solving the problem by thinking,planning,evaluation and practice, and finally reach the purposes of improving actual teaching and self-development .In the 1990s more and more experts and scholars at home represented by Professor Xiong Chuanwu from East China Normal University dedicated to the research in this area. But what are the attitudes of English teachers to the reflective teaching in junior high schools of Henan province? And what are the frequent ways of reflecting their classroom teaching? Based on these two questions, this research made a questionnaire. At the same time, in order to make clear the effectiveness of the techniques of reflective teaching, the author made a case study.The author carried out a questionnaire to 92 English teachers in junior high schools from Henan province who were receiving short-term concentration training on the orders of"National Training Program"which was undertook by the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Education in autumn 2010. At the same time the author selected randomly two teachers from the Xinxiang city as the tracking objects from the 92 teachers. After getting their consent the author decided to go on a case tracking for eight weeks. The tracking objects are both the English teachers of grade seven. One of them is a male teacher who is labeled as teacher A, and the other is a female teacher who is labeled as teacher B. In the process of case tracking, the author collaborated with the two English teachers to find some existing problems in their English vocabulary teaching. Aiming at these problems, the author guided them to use the techniques of reflective teaching to solve these problems. The author respectively made an interview with the two teachers,made an questionnaire with the students and recorded their lessons before and after the tracking. Through the comparison of the results before and after the case tracking, the author testified the effectiveness of the techniques of reflective teaching.This paper is divided into five chapters: introduction, theoretical frameworks, research design, results and discussion of the questionnaire and case study, and concluding remarks. The author carried on the questionnaire to 92 English teachers in junior high schools from 11 cities/counties of Henan province to learn more about their frequent ways and their attitudes towards reflective teaching. At the same time through the case tracking of the two teachers from Xinxiang city, the author makes clear the effectiveness of the techniques of reflective teaching.The statistics show that the English teachers in junior high schools of Henan province hold a positive attitude to reflective teaching. They usually write teaching journals, read educational literature, do action research, attend the lectures mutually, and get the information of teaching effect from the students'exercises. However, they don't usually record their lessons and make questionnaires. At the same time, the results of the case study testified the good effects of the techniques of reflective teaching. Based on the detailed analysis of the data collected,the author tries to propose some suggestions for English teachers'reflective teaching.Those for junior high school English teachers are supposed to: (1) love their students and often communicate with their students to understand their needs in time. (2) enhance the teachers'consciousness of reflective teaching to trigger the internal driving force of reflective teaching. (3) have the sense of research and learn to carry out action research from their classroom teaching (4) insist on writing teaching journals and often review their teaching journals to reflect on their teaching. (5) often make classroom observation through attending each other.School administrators should take an active part in:(1) provide more financial support for the teachers to do reflective teaching, for example, the expenditure of the equipments of video recording and teacher training. (2) create cultural environment for teachers' reflection and encourage the teachers to reflect and organize the training about commonly-used techniques of reflective teaching. (3) establish a platform for teachers to communicate and share their resources,for example,organize the group discussion and mutual observation and create the Blog to share the teachers'experience.This thesis is divided into five chapters:Chapter One Introduction, Chapter Two Literature Review, Chapter Three Research Design, Chapter Four Results and Discussion and Chapter Five Conclusions.