An Investigation Into The Quality Of Junior High School English Teachers In Southwestern Yunnan

In China,the curriculum objectives have been constantly being updated with the curriculum reform in basic education,changing from the “double-base”to the“three-dimensional target” then to the “core literacy”.When proposing to cultivate students' core literacy,the key of the current curriculum is to improve teachers' quality.Teachers must equip themselves with some “essential characters and key abilities” to adapt to the educational reform in the “core literacy” era.Although there are a lot of studies on the English teacher's quality,up to now,to my best knowledge,few have focused on the quality of junior high school English teachers in ethnic minority areas.Therefore,drawing upon the teacher professional development theory and the requirements for English teachers' quality with the background of core literacy,and applying quantitative and qualitative methods,the dissertation aims to explore the present situation of junior high school English teachers' quality in the ethnic minority areas of Southwestern Yunnan,the factors affecting the improvement of English teachers' quality in this area and the effective measures to improve their quality.The data were collected through questionnaires and interviews from 74 subjects of 9junior high schools.Among the 74 teachers,6 teachers were selected for the interviews and classroom observations.At last SPSS 16.0 was employed to analyse the data.The results of this investigation show: the overall level of junior high school English teachers' quality in southwestern Yunnan is low.In particular,their cultural literacy is insufficient,as well as their teaching reflective ability and learning ability are weak,which need to be improved.With the results from the questionnaires and interviews,the author analyse the affecting factors in the improvement of these English teachers' quality: the particularity of the geographical environment and language environment in minority area,uncooperative students and their parents,brain drain and so on.In the last part of this paper,the author put forward fivestrategies for the improvement of junior high school English teachers' quality in southwestern Yunnan.In summary,this empirical study is intended to analyze the language and cultural literacy of junior high school English teachers in remote minority areas,their teaching capability,as well as reflective and learning ability.Hopefully,it can be helpful to improve these teachers' teaching efficiency and contribute more to their professional development.At the same time,with the expectation that more attention from the relevant education departments and social institutions can be attracted to the professional development of English teachers.