A Study On English Oral And Listening Homework Design For Junior Middle School Students

With the continuous deepening of the new curriculum reform, English teachers of junior middle school are facing more challenges and changes during English teaching. The application of English as a foreign language is drawing more and more attention. The traditional English teaching that focuses more on reading and writing than listening and speaking is changing for the direction of the balanced development of the four skills. In addition, the college entrance examination, as a baton of English teaching, releases reform signal frequently in recent years, which says oral and listening test score will be part of the total score. Therefore, the requirements to improve oral and listening teaching are put on the agenda of the teaching reform, and the design of oral and listening homework has also become a concern. At the same time, the English homework design at present has some problems, for instance, written homework accounts for a much larger proportion than oral and listening homework, and students have a heavy burden of homework. Therefore, improving the quality and proportion of oral and listening homework can not only meet the requirements of new curriculum reform, but also alleviate the homework burden for students.There have already been a lot of research on homework at home and abroad, however, few researchers focus on the study on the oral and listening homework. The author conducted the study on English oral and listening homework for the junior middle school students through analyzing the results and the reference of previous research. Through the investigation, the author wanted to know the following information: 1. students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards the oral and listening homework; 2. students’ and teachers’ views on the current English oral and listening homework; 3. students’ needs for the English oral and listening homework. The author used the questionnaires and the interview questions to collect data. The subjects were 417 students of Junior One and 18 English teachers from No.2 Junior High School in Erenhot. The results of the questionnaires were analyzed with statistical software SPSS17.0. In the process of analysis, the author took interview questions’ results as a supplement to the results of questionnaires.The results show that students and teachers have improved recognition of oral and listening homework. The quantity of oral and listening homework has increased as well. Teachers pay close attention to the oral and listening homework design to make its form and content meet the needs of students. But there are also some problems in the current oral and listening homework, for instance, it is too difficult for students to complete, its content and form is still single and teachers do not pay much attention to the students’ enthusiasm of participating in the design of it. In addition, the oral and listening homework quantity increases, but teachers don’t correspondingly reduce the amount of written homework and this leads to the increase of the English homework burden for students instead. The author puts forward some suggestions for the design of oral and listening homework for junior middle school students on the basis of the investigation results.