On School-based English Open Courses In Rural Junior High School

The open course is an important teaching and research activity. It plays a great role infacilitating teachers’ professional development and improving teaching quality. Therefore, it iswidely used in middle schools and elementary schools. During the process of its development,problems of open courses constantly come out, for example, the low efficiency of opencourses, ineffective evaluation and the phenomenon of “show”, etc. These problems seriouslyaffect the effect of open courses. It is the embarrassing situation that makes many scholars andteachers constantly study open courses and try to propose effective improving suggestions.Though related studies about open courses are conducted by foreign and domesticresearchers and teachers, they are not concrete and neglect school-based open courses that canbest play open courses’ roles and can best manifest values of open courses. Therefore, theprevious studies have limitation in improving the actual effects of open courses.In order to make up for limitations of previous studies and effectively improve thequality of open courses, the thesis chooses a sample school to do a careful and deep empiricalresearch on school-based open courses. The thesis consists of six parts. They are introduction,literature review, theory of community of practice, research design, results and discussion andconclusion.Chapter one is introduction. It introduces the research background, methods of theresearch, significance and layout of the thesis. Through two survey methods of questionnaireand interview, the thesis conducts a deep and careful research on the sample school. On onehand, to some extent, it makes up for limitations of previous studies; on the other hand, itmakes a little contribution to improving the quality of school-based English open courses inrural junior high schools. Chapter two is literature review, briefly introducing related studies of open courses.Because open courses are with typical Chinese characteristic, the quantity of domesticresearches is overwhelmingly more than that of foreign researches. Domestic researchesmainly concentrate on five aspects. They are definitions, types, values of open courses,problems of open courses and improving suggestions. However, these studies, especiallystudies about problems and solutions, suffer from some limitations. Firstly, domestic studiesare mainly about open courses with the feature of demonstration, which takes a smallproportion and can not fully show effects of open courses. Secondly, studies about problemsare empty and mainly cover two major problems, which are the phenomenon of “show” andproblems of class evaluation. Thirdly, problems-solving suggestions are not concrete and lackof instructiveness. Based on limitations above, the thesis conducts a research on school-basedEnglish open courses.Chapter three is the theoretical foundation of the thesis, introducing the theory of“Community of Practice”. This chapter covers definition, characteristics and connation ofCommunity of Practice. The essence argument of the theory is that members master skills anddevelop themselves through participation. Meanwhile, the mode and factors influencing asuccessful community of practice are introduced, which guide the attempts of developing ahigh-quality school-based open course.Chapter four is research design. It introduces four research questions，subjects， researchpurpose, instruments and data collection. The four questions are expressed in the following.①How is English open course carried out in the case school?②What are English teachers’attitudes toward open courses in this school?③What are problems of English open courses inthis school?④What about effects of open courses in this school?Chapter five is results and discussion. Based on data, answers to the four questions areacquired and accordingly, problems of school-based English open courses are discovered. Firstly, the management about open courses in this school is not adequate, which affects theeffect of open courses; secondly, teachers in this school hold positive attitudes to school-basedopen courses, but view open courses beyond schools negatively; thirdly, problems of opencourses exist in three stages of pre-class, while-class and post-class, which are inadequatepreparation before class, purposeless during class watching and low quality of classevaluation; fourthly, English open courses in this school in essence are daily teaching and failin playing roles.Based on research results and analysis above, the sixth chapter of conclusion coversthree aspects. They are major findings, implications of the research and limitations. Majorfindings summarize problem of open courses and briefly elaborate influencing factors. Threefactors should be responsible for these problems. The first is the inadequate management ofEnglish open courses; the second is the lack of an English teaching and research group, whichis an important subject management organ; the third is teachers’ inadequate enterprise inself-development，which can be shown from three stages of pre-class, while-class andpost-class. Therefore, the part of implications of the research proposes feasible and concreteimproving suggestions from three aspects, which are the management of school authority, thebuilding of an effective teaching and research group and three stages of an open course:pre-class, while-class and post-class.