A Study Of The Transition From High School English To College English Teaching

The high school and college are two different educational stages in China and there exist great gaps in English teaching between the two stages. Those gaps have led to problems in the transition from high school English teaching to college English teaching. Those transitional problems have greatly hindered college English teaching from its educational goals. Many Chinese researchers have been studying the issue and have provided suggestions. However, little empirical research has been conducted.This thesis aims to explore and explain the status quo of the transition from high school English teaching to college English teaching via conducting a survey study in which the developmental changes in the English learning motivation and learning strategies of college freshmen of non-English majors in the first college semester are analyzed and discussed. Instruments, including questionnaire, interview and test are used in the study. It is hoped that based on the findings, pedagogical implications for a smooth transition can be drawn and will help deal with the issue.The results of the study indicate that virtually all the67freshmen selected from Wuhan University experienced more or less the impact of the transitional problems of English teaching and learning. Those problems were centered in goal-setting, interest, teachers’role and strategy training. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications for curriculum design and English teachers of national key universities are discussed respectively. The implications for curriculum design can be summarized as follows:1) developing academic English ability would be a concrete goal for college English teaching and learning;2) the society and culture of English speakers should be a more important part of college English teaching and the audio-visual course would be suitable for this part. The implications for teachers can be described as follows:1) a close interrelationship between teachers and students may be necessary;2) a sound understanding of the high-school English teaching may be necessary;3) a time for freshmen to adapt themselves to the college English teaching may be necessary;4) keeping moderate anxiety may be necessary. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction, which describes the background and purpose of the present study. Chapter two reviews the research of learning motivation, learning strategies and the transition, and the research gap is discussed after the evaluation of the previous studies. Chapter three presents the research methodology, in which four aspects of the research design are described in detail, namely, subjects, instruments, procedures of data collection and methods of data analysis. Chapter four discusses the results of the study in relation to the research questions. In Chapter six, major findings are summarized and pedagogical implications are provided. Limitations are also pointed out.