A Study On The Junior High School English Homework Strategies

As an indispensable part of the routine of primary and middle school students in allnations, homework has been regarded as one of the most important teaching strategies. TheChinese Ministry of Education and provincial education departments have both issueddocuments requiring that teachers assign homework reasonably so as to reduce students’academic burden, however, this problem has not yet been solved thoroughly.With the deepening of the curriculum reform ideas, much progress has been made inclassroom instructions. In the aspect of teaching goal setting, the cultivation of students’attitude and values has never been more important than before. Recently, classroominstruction and students’ way of learning have experienced many positive changes, buthomework has not been much affected by new curriculum reform. Traditional Englishhomework could not keep up with new curriculum ideas not only in content but form. As ispointed out in new curriculum standards, students are the main body of learning anddevelopment, and English homework has to integrate closely with students’ characteristics. Ifteachers implement homework strategies improperly, the problems of too much and difficulthomework could have negative effect on students’ attitude to learning and physical andmental development. The researches on homework at home focus on homework design andhomework assessment, empirical studies on teachers’ homework strategies are not paidenough attention to and studies concerned are not thorough and in-depth enough.Therefore, in view of it, the author, in combination with the reality of language teaching,carried out an investigation into the present situation about junior school English homeworkand English teachers’ homework strategies before he has made a thorough analysis aboutstudies on homework home and abroad. This paper aims to offer more scientific andreasonable homework strategies to English teachers based on analysis of those Englishhomework problems, to make sure English homework function at its best and promotestudents’ all-round development.With the research methods of questionnaire investigation and interview, the authorcarried out investigations on4aspects, that is, ideas on English homework targets, Englishhomework functions, English homework design and homework feedback. Research subjectsinclude900junior middle school students and about60English teachers in3junior schoolsat3different levels in Beijing. Then he explores the countermeasures on how to improvejunior school English teachers’ homework strategies based on analysis about English homework problems concerned. Consequently, arrives at conclusions as follow:There are some problems about teachers’ homework strategies in junior middle school,to be specific, deficiency of layered English homework implementation as a result ofignorance of individual differences, ignorance of the “promoting cooperative learning”objective, lack of interest in junior English homework, lack of detailed and encouragingcomments about homework completion though most of the English teachers think highly ofcorrecting English homework in time, which indicates that English teachers attach littleimportance on homework feedback or evaluation so that English assignments could not helpstudents’ English learning as it should have.According to the research results about junior English homework problems, this paperputs forward some countermeasures to improve homework strategies for junior schoolEnglish teachers, that is, to implement layered English homework taking into accountstudents’ individual differences, to attach importance to communication function of Englishas a language and promote students’ cooperative learning, to make English assignments morediversified and interesting, to pay attention to comments’ functions of guidance andencouragement and offer more detailed and encouraging comments, etc.