Research On Moral Education In English Picture Book Instruction At Elementary School

Moral education is an important aspect of the core competence of English subject in elementary and secondary schools.Both English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011 version)and Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 version)incorporated affective attitude(including moral education)into the teaching goals.English picture book(EPB)has the characteristics of authentic language,combination of pictures and texts,learning interest,which is helpful to promote moral education of elementary school students.Taking elementary English textbooks(called New Standard English),picture books(called Lisheng Clover Graded Readings,???????????)and 14English teachers from six elementary schools in Qingdao as research objects,research methods such as text analysis,classroom observation and interview are used and the research questions are:1.What is the current status of moral education through EPB instruction in elementary school?2.From what aspects does English picture book facilitate the moral education in elementary school English teaching?3.How can elementary school English teachers use EPB effectively to penetrate moral education?Text analysis finds that EPB has rich moral education factors,which is complementary to moral education contents of textbook,involving educational contents such as social morals,family virtues,personal morality,safety awareness,and ecological environmental protection,etc.Through classroom observation and interview,current status and features of moral education in EPB are analyzed,and effective methods of moral education are summarized such as emotional encouragement,questioning,making use of pictures,and relating to real life.The study also shows that all teachers emphasize the mining of moral education factors in teaching process,but expert teachers are more flexible and implement through the whole lesson implicitly while new teachers normally mention it at the end of the lesson.Classroom observation and interview have also found that it is difficult to achieve moral education aims because students may have various perspectives when moral education is infiltrated.In addition,elementary school students' limited English language ability affects their expression of connotations in EPB.The external problems in EPB instruction are insufficient English class hours and EPB resources.In response to the above problems,suggestions are proposed as follows:Educational administrations and school leaders should provide certain support such as increasing English class hours,developing school-based courses,providing EPB instruction training;English teachers should value self-reflection and professionaldevelopment,improve professional knowledge and skills,actively develop and collect EPB resources;Expert teachers can give new teachers pairing guidance and team construction;Selecting EPB should follow principles of ideology,science and interest.Future research can enrich teaching methods of moral education in EPB instruction,strengthen comparative research such as urban-rural comparison or comparison in different regions,and conduct targeted moral education research based on EPB genre or students' age group.