Research On The Effectiveness Of English Assignment Design In Senior High School

The overall objective of English curriculum for senior high school students is to cultivate their comprehensive language ability, and the formation of the ability is mainly based on five dimensional objectives, including language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitude, learning strategies and cultural consciousness. In order to help students to achieve the five curriculum objectives, teachers should give students specific language trainings according to their different intelligence levels. For example, teachers can design various kinds of English assignment.English assignment is an indispensable part of teaching. It is a necessary way for students to learn and master English, as well as an effective form to cultivate autonomous learning ability.However, in current English teaching process, there are still a lot of problems for the arrangement of English assignment. Besides, teachers have not paid enough attention to the effectiveness of assignments yet. Therefore, it is extremely essential for this thesis to research on the effective design of English assignment.First, this thesis has analyzed the background and significance of this research, which helps to realize the necessity of this research. Next, this thesis has carried out literature review about the definition of assignment and the relevant research on English assignment in senior high school at home and abroad. Through survey questionnaires and interviews, the research has found the current situation of English assignment for senior high school students in terms of assignment amount, assignment value, assignment forms, and assignment evaluation and so on.Based on the problems of English assignment and Multiple Intelligences Theory, this thesis has explored a new English assignment mode. Therefore, five principles for assignment design have been presented. They are the principle of hierarchy, the principle of diversity, the principle of fun, the principle of cooperation and the principle of practice. The author has selected two classes with similar English level from the Middle School Attached to Henan University(Class 3, Grade One as the controlled class, and Class 4, Grade One as the experimental class). In the experimental class, contents and forms of assignments are designed according to these five principles. In the controlled class, the traditional assignment mode is employed. After the experiment, by comparing the results of the pre-test and post-test we find that both excellent rate and average score of the experimental class are higher than those of the controlled class. In addition, the same questionnaire survey has also been carried out in the experimental class again after the post-test. The experiment has proved that the new English assignment mode is effective, because it can reduce students’ burden, strengthen their enthusiasm on English learning and then improve their English level.