A Study On The Application Of The Four-step Teaching To English Teaching In Rural Senior High Schools

In the present society, English plays an increasingly important role in the development of human beings as a tool to communicate with people all over the world. English education can’t satisfy people’s demands any more. However, English teaching in countryside high schools is limited by the following factors: English levels of students, teachers, teaching strategies and so on. Teachers are supposed to update teaching concepts, improve methods and abilities of teaching, and respect students as the center in education. Therefore, the quality of English teaching can be strengthened constantly. The four-step teaching, as a special teaching method, is very significant for English teaching. There are four basic links in the teaching process of the four-step approach’s application: independent inquiry, cooperative inquiry, training and test, and inquiry of expanding, which has broken the traditional teaching mode of English. This new teaching approach has been accepted by more and more people. Therefore, the track of its development and evolution demonstrates the spirit of educators who have been in the pursuit of high quality in language teaching. On the basis of introducing the background, purpose and characteristics of the four-step teaching method, the paper focuses on the application of the four-step teaching approach in rural senior high schools through analysis of domestic and international situation. First of all, this thesis gives the analysis of its application in practice. Then, the study has a discussion about whether the method of teaching can motivate the students’ interest, strengthen their sense of achievement and confidence as well as improve the students’ abilities of autonomous learning and academic record by findings of the questionnaire, observation, test method and interview in practice. It is proved that the four-step teaching method has an obvious and remarkable effect on arousing students’ interest of learning, sense of achievement and confidence in rural high schools. It is a new and innovative teaching method that is quite different from traditional education. In the teaching mode, students, who are motivated by their interest, become the subjects in English class and learn autonomously, while teachers act as guides, which is conductive to promoting students’ abilities of independent learning. Consequently, students’ academic record becomes better than before, along with the steady improvement of students’ learning interest and abilities. Although there still exist problems about the limitation of resource allocation and differences among the research subjects during the process in the application of the four-step teaching method, it will have an increasingly positive influence on the English education in rural high schools with its continuous summary and extension.