Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan High School English Curriculum Standard Comparison Research

In order to adapt to the change of situation at home and abroad, a new round ofcurriculum reform was begun in Chinese mainland at the turn of the century. Butthere are still significant gaps between the quality of English education, the progressand effectiveness of education for all round development and the needs of China’seconomic and social development in21century. Facing the defects of the curriculum,only through comparison can we know the demerits.This paper mainly takes the English curriculum standards of senior high schoolin the three areas as research objects. After introducing the background of Englishcurriculum standards, the paper analyzes and compares the English curriculumstandard in the fields of their curriculum objectives, contents, implementations andassessments. In each section, this paper first compares, and then analyzes the cause ofthe similarities and difference of the three curriculum standard according to the socialbackground.In conclusion, the English curriculum standards of Chinese Mainland, HongKong and Taiwan possess the same values and different value pursuits. Thesimilarities among the three English curriculum standards are attributed to the samedemands on culture and social development. The differences in curriculum objectives,contents and development directions are caused by historical、cultural and economicreasons.Although the English curriculum standards of senior high school on ChineseMainland had achieved substantial progress, further adjustments are still needed. Forexample, the effect of social political, economical, cultural and education backgroundshould be given full consideration; abilities indexes should be more close to“humanism”; more attention should be paid to instrumental and humanities unity; thestudy contents can be relatively open, etc.