A Study Of "Peer Homework Correction" Mode In Junior High School English Teaching—A Case Study

Homework correction is an important part in teaching, and it is of great significance to students’ development. At present, the teacher corrects each student’s homework. Although this way of correcting homework has many advantages, it is not conducive to the cultivation of students’ initiative. With the development of the new curriculum reform, a new way of correcting homework was proposed, that is, the peer homework correction mode. It refers to correcting homework mutually among junior high school students under the guidance of the teachers. Peer homework correction also reflects the teaching ideas of "autonomy, cooperation, and exploration" put forward by the new curriculum reform.This thesis is a case study and the author tries to analyze the effectiveness of the peer homework correction mode by introducing the application of this mode in junior high school English teaching. The research questions of this thesis are:(1) Can "peer homework correction" mode improve students’ English proficiency? (2) In what aspects can "peer homework correction" mode promote the development of students?In order to answer the research questions, the author chose 112 students from Class 1 and Class 8 of Grade 7 of Shenzhen Guangming New District Experimental School in Guangdong Province where she had her teaching internship as the subjects. The data of the pre-test and post-test were collected and then analyzed by the SPSS software. In addition, the author conducted the investigation of questionnaire, classroom observation and the interviews with the teacher and students. The main theoretical foundations of this thesis are constructivism, cooperative learning theory, autonomous learning theory and cognitive elaboration theory. Constructivism theory advocates the student-centered teaching model and it emphasizes students’ active exploration of knowledge. It holds that students receive the message not in a passive way but construct the meaning of knowledge actively. Constructivism learning theory emphasizes the importance of the learning process. Peer homework correction provides students with the opportunities of correcting homework. The students construct the knowledge actively and solve the problems on their own, reflecting the student-centered teaching idea. Peer homework correction adopts the cooperative learning theory. Students discuss the questions together within their group and cultivate their interpersonal skills and cooperative ability. Autonomous learning advocates that students are the masters of their own learning and they achieve their learning goals by independent analysis, exploration, practice, query and creation. Peer homework correction provides students with the opportunities of thinking independently and discussing with others, deepening the understanding about the knowledge and strengthening their learning initiative. Cognitive elaboration theory holds that one of the most effective methods of elaboration is explaining materials to others. During the process of peer homework correction, the cognitive elaboration of the materials is helpful for the progress of the explainers. Both the explainers and the students who receive the explanation can benefit from this process.Through the experiment and the discussion of the peer homework correction mode, the results of this research show that peer homework correction, as a new way of correcting homework, can be effectively implemented in junior high school English teaching. This new mode improves the students’ English proficiency and promotes their all-round development. After one semester’s implementation of the peer homework correction mode, students have widened their thinking, developed the healthy emotion and promoted the initiative towards English learning. It can be testified that the peer homework correction mode is effective in junior high school English teaching. What’s more, this mode has reduced the burden of the teacher, raised the teaching efficiency and enhanced the teacher’s sense of happiness. The peer homework correction mode is recommendable in junior high school English teaching and if well applied, it will bring a lot of benefits to teachers as well as students.