An Investigation Into The Senior High School English Teacher Language Awareness

The basic viewpoint of the language awareness(LA)researchers is that language users' understanding of language forms and their ability to use language are correlated,the ability to understand and analyse language is one of the decisive factors of teaching effectiveness.Although the current English teaching emphasizes more on the communicative teaching method,solid basic language skills and LA are still of great significance to achieving the teaching objectives,which means it is still necessary to study the senior high school ETLA so as to find the influencing factors of the unsatisfying teaching effect in the light of the theories of ETLA.This study investigates the senior high school ETLA of from three aspects:(1)What is the level of the senior high school ETLA?(2)What are the problems in the senior high school ETLA?(3)What are the main factors effecting the senior high school ETLA? First,a grammatical test was conducted on 30 teachers in 5 high schools in Luoyang to investigate the ability of the subjects to identify and use grammatical terms and to interpret grammatical errors in their mother tongue.Secondly,the teaching process of each of the 30 teachers was recorded for one class period,.The frequency of the use of the mother tongue and the target language in the classroom,the length of the slip(pause,repetition,self-correction,etc.)and grammatical errors(third person singular,subject-predicate consistency,tense,etc.)of each teacher were then counted.Combed with the grammatical test scores of each teacher,the level of the ETLA of Luoyang senior high school could be obtained.Thirdly,in order to understand the causes of the present situation of senior high school ETLA,the teachers of the subjects were interviewed separately.Finally,in order to verify the reliability and validity of classroom observation and the interviews,this study carried out a statistical analysis of the achievements of 500 students of the 30 teachers,and conducted a questionnaire survey on them.Descriptive analysis,variance analysis,independent sample T test and correlation analysis of the obtained data are carried out by SPSS16.0 software.The results of teachers' grammatical tests show that the senior high school ETLA is at the upper middle level.The results of classroom observation and questionnaire survey indicate that the senior high school ETLA has the following problems: the English teachers' classroom language is not standard,they can not accurately use the target language to explain the grammatical knowledge;in the teaching process,the language errors committed by students can not be corrected in a timely and appropriate manner;in addition,the results of comparison between student achievement and teacher's grammatical test shows that although the senior high school ETLA at the upper middle level,the English teachers' ability to use the language awareness related knowledge to teach is insufficient.The results of teacher interview and teacher's questionnaire show that the level of senior high school ETLA is influenced not only by their grammatical knowledge level and pragmatic ability,but also by factors such as their educational background and insufficient reflection on teaching.This study enlightens that senior high school English teachers should improve their language awareness through in-depth professional study,consciously use their theoretical knowledge of TLA in English teaching activities,standardize English classroom language,and guide students in English learning concerning language problems in a timely and appropriate manner,pay attention to teaching reflection,summarize their teaching experience to improve their teaching quality.