On School-based Senior English Curriculum Development

School-based curriculum development, which was initiated in the United States in the1960s, reflects the need of the development of politics, economy and education. This paper is intended to provide suggestions on school-based senior English curriculum development for the administrators and teachers who are planning to develop and implement school-based English curriculum.At present, many schools in our countries are carrying out curriculum reforms under the guidance of policies. Great achievements have been made in the development of the school-based curriculum. The content of the curriculum has covered different subjects and fields, such as social science, languages, physical science and art. Nowadays, students are exposed to diversities of new things. They are hungry for new knowledge in different fields to adapt to the rapid technological change. School-based English curriculum offers students different courses from the aspects of language skills, language application, and language appreciation. Therefore, I felt the thirst for the theoretical and practical knowledge about school-based curriculum development.In my thesis, I have referred to "Five Formal Steps of Instruction" proposed by Herbart, school-based curriculum development theory by Skilbeck and "Theoretical Framework" proposed by Bruner.According to these theories and the previous school-based curriculum developers’experience, we should make out the necessary conditions and the basic tasks of school-based curriculum development. When these conditions are prepared and the tasks are ascertained, schools can develop their own school-based curriculum according to Skilbeck’s five steps of school-based curriculum development.The school-based English curriculum in Jiaxing No.1High School is developed by eight English teachers. This curriculum is intended to widen the range of English curriculum resources and help students have a good knowledge of local culture and customs as well as improve their intercultural language communication ability. Teamwork is the main class activity. Teachers can also take some tourism programs as teaching aids to help understand the teaching material well. There are two types of evaluation: one is to evaluate the school-based curriculum itself; the other is the evaluation of students’performance. The title of the teaching material is Discovery of Jiaxing. Four topics are introduced:Ancient Water Towns, Cultural Heritage, Cultural Celebrities and Diet Custom.After the implementation of the school-based curriculum, the teaching concept has been renewed and professional knowledge has been increased from the perspective of teachers. As for the students, most of them have not only gained more knowledge about local culture but also improved their abilities of self-study and cooperation. Despite the benefit we get from the school-based curriculum, some problems still remain to be solved. How can the relations between the school-based curriculum and compulsory curriculum be properly coped with? How shall we present our school’s characteristics in teaching? How can we really promote teachers’ teaching ideas? How shall we deal with the contradiction between school-based English curriculum and NMET? To solve these problems, this paper provides some suggestions. Firstly, the school-based English curriculum should provide more attractive teaching materials as well as interesting teaching activities. Secondly, the unique teaching idea of the school should be put into the teaching of school-based curriculum to highlight the school’s characteristics. Teachers need to be trained to design the teaching activities properly to combine the school’s teaching ideas with the school-based curriculum. In addition, a group of teachers should be specially assigned to the task of teaching school-based curriculum and all the subject teachers should be trained for the school-based curriculum. Lastly, the evaluation methods should be changed to be combined with the university admission conditions provided by different universities.With its unique significance, school-based curriculum development calls for the assistance from the government and the local authority. During the course, school teachers need to transform from their traditional role of a conductor of curriculum to not only a conductor but also a developer, organizer and evaluator of school-based curriculum, for which some teachers are still not very well prepared. There is still a long way to go for the school-based curriculum development.