A Study On The Application Of Problem-based Learning To High School English Teaching

The traditional learning method in China has contributed a lot to mass education.Students can learn some basic knowledge that has been accumulated in the longhistory of mankind. However, it has some negative impact on learning. Withtraditional learning methods, teachers are paying less attention to the comprehensiveabilities; instead, they are teaching students how to remember what have been taughtand how to get high scores. As time passes, students can do little instead of recitingthe knowledge written down on their notebooks and doing exam papers. They cannotlearn by themselves without teachers’ teaching and to make matters worse, they haveno idea how to use their knowledge to deal with problems arising from the real world.So we are eager to adopt a new learning or teaching method to develop students’overall ability.Some provinces in China such as Shandong and Guangdong have adopted NewHigh School Curriculum Reform Program since2004. The reform aims to change theway of teaching and learning in senior high school. Students’ learning ability, inquiryability and practical ability are attached great importance to in this program. It isnecessary for students to develop their basic language skills, including listening,reading, writing and speaking with teachers’ instructions and encouragement. Theskills will help students to lay a solid foundation for studying English, contributing toother abilities, such as cooperating and inquiring. Besides, teachers are expected totake the responsibility to provide opportunities for students to learn knowledge andsolve problems for themselves instead of teaching students to recite. When solvingsome problems or learning different knowledge, students are completing it by meansof cooperating with others, doing research and checking reference materials.Problem-based learning is a student-centered and teacher-directed learningmethod, which focus on the real problem situations. It inspires students toindependently apply the knowledge to exploring and analyzing problems. That is whyPBL should be adopted into English teaching in senior high school, which allows students, who are the most important operators to do research, cooperate with theirpartners, solve the problems and present their research achievement.This thesis will center on three questions about PBL’s application to Englishteaching in high school. The first question is whether PBL will benefit students intheir interest and enthusiasm in English learning and contribute to a better relationshipbetween teachers and students. Another question is whether PBL will help to improvestudents’ comprehensive English competency including listening, speaking, readingand writing. What’s more, if students can get developed in initiative learning andcooperation? The researcher provides a teaching case with the application of PBL.The text book that is used is the New Standard published by Foreign LanguageTeaching and Research Press. When dealing with “My New Teachers” from ModuleTwo Book One, the researcher designed the class according to the six steps. Firstly,divide the class into8groups. Secondly, the teacher helps to create a problemsituation. Thirdly, a problem is posed according to the problem situation. Fourthly,students analyze the problem and find out proper solutions to the problem by teamwork. Fifthly, students keep record of their team work and the last stage is to reflecton the learning process.The researcher of this research chose two classes from a senior high school as thesubjects of this experiment and one of them is the control class and the other one isthe experimental class. Questionnaire, interview, test and classroom observation areessential instruments to carry out the research in the process of learning.Questionnaire and test are used before and after the experiment. The researcherinvited three other teachers to audit the class and observe students’ classroompresentation. To collect more information about the students’ and teachers’ ideas aboutthe learning process, the author has interviews with students from the experimentalclass and the three teachers. This kind of teaching is practiced in the experimentalclass for over10months and at the start and end of the experiment, there was apre-test and a post-test respectively.By analyzing the research result, the thesis reaches a conclusion thatProblem-based Learning plays an active role in stimulating student’s English learning attitude, learning ability and performance and also has an effect on better relationshipbetween students and the teacher. This thesis provides further proof of the operabilityand availability of PBL in English Teaching in Senior High School.