An Investigation Of Implementing English Classroom Activities In The Senior High Schools Under The Background Of New Curriculum Reform

The history of senior high school English curriculum reform in our country can be dated back to the autumn of 2004, and four provinces such as Guangdong, Shandong, Hainan and Ningxia took the New English Curriculum Reform at the same year, so that they are regarded as the first batch of experimental provinces of curriculum reform. Later then, other provinces also took part in the curriculum reform one after another. In autumn 2012, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region started to conduct its senior high schools’ curriculum reform; it is regarded as the latest province. Till now, many researches have been done on the New English Curriculum Reform in senior high schools and some research results are already achieved. However, a lot of problems of the reform still remain, which are worth further exploring and discussing, and what’s more, teaching is an endless topic for research, for it is always new to people.It is necessary to have a clear understanding of the status of classroom activity when conducting the curriculum reform because classroom activity can be taken as a "window" to view how the curriculum reform goes. What’s more, conducting classroom activity is one of the ways to improve students’ learning ability. Inspired by the previous researches, the present research conducts a survey by taking some students and English teachers who are from seven senior high schools of Guilin as the research subjects for the purposes of getting the real status of English classroom activity during the period of the curriculum reform, finding out problems and discussing the related strategies. It tries to provide useful reference for promoting the curriculum reform. The methods used are questionnaire, interview and classroom observation. The survey was conducted in May 2014, covering the dimensions of students’ opinions of English subject, students’ opinions of classroom activities, students’ participation of classroom activities and their opinions for conducting classroom activities, etc.The result of survey shows most students hold a correct attitude toward English subject, and most of them are basically satisfied with the current situation of implementing classroom activities. However, there are also some problems. Firstly, some teachers don’t recognize the importance and necessity of classroom activities. They still hold the idea that to get high scores in exams is still the focus of teaching. Secondly, a part of students don’t show high enthusiasm in participating in classroom activities; teachers meet some problems in conducting classroom activities, but they don’t intend to resolve them, hence, the results of activities are not ideal. And then, some teachers are not active in carrying out classroom activities, so, they are reluctant to study and improve them. Meanwhile, students say that classroom activities are welcome if they are well-designed.According to the problems above and the reality, some suggestions are proposed accordingly as follows. First, education administrative departments and schools should thoroughly implement the spirit of the New English Curriculum Reform, and help English teachers further change their traditional teaching concept through offering them more training of professional knowledge and skills. Second, English teachers should further understand the importance of classroom activities for conducting classroom activity is one of the requirements of the New English Curriculum Reform, which is an important way to cultivate students’ learning awareness and help them improve their learning ability; they must try their best to design classroom activities so as to promote their efficiency.