A Comparison On Key Competencies Oriented English Curriculum Of Primary Schools Between China And America

National Languages Committee established the first scientific research base“Center for Strategic Studies in Foreign Languages” in Shanghai International Studies University in 2011.Language Strategy and Language Planning is the secondary discipline set under “Foreign Language and Literature” which belongs to one degree course.Educational linguistics is one of the important research orientations of Language Strategy and Language Planning,which belongs to Applied Linguistics on the broad sense.This study is carried out under such background.Study on the implementation of discipline key competencies in curriculum is the most important part of foreign language education.China and America have their own characters and advantages on the curriculum design.Oriented by key competencies for English learners(generally include 4 dimensions: language competence,cultural awareness,thinking character and learning ability)and referring to Brown's essential components of curriculum design,this thesis,via Ant Conc to retrieve the relevant keywords and high-frequency words together with their concordances,compares two groups of self-built data corpus: 1)Chinese Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education(The 2011 Edition)(primary English)and American Guilderland Central School District(GSCD)Curriculum Guide(2013)(primary English);2)information sources from official websites of part Chinese representative primary schools and those of New York State which are considered as one of the ways to test the implementation of curriculum standards in teaching.The study finds that American English curriculum is characterized by concreteness,guiding function and interdisciplinary,which integrates key competencies for English learners into the curriculum harmoniously;Chinese English curriculum also emphasizes the comprehensive function of key competencies and attaches more importance to English knowledge,ability and emotion;it also proposed higher requirements on teachers' comprehensive quality.However,compared with the United States,our teaching and education objectives are relatively broad and the description in words is not clear enough.Meanwhile,the cultivation of Thinking Character embodied is not obvious.In one way or another,our curriculum isstrong in theory,but comparatively weak in implementation.By comparing these two,we hope that Chinese English curriculum continues to maintain its own advantages:focus on the cultivation of values an attitudes in language learning;focus on simple language output orally.Meanwhile,we should learn from America on the following aspects: to further refine and enrich the content of listening,speaking,especially reading and writing: improve the practicability of objectives;strengthen interdisciplinary perspectives;pay more attention to the coherent nature of assessments through language study;deepen students' understanding and sensibility on different language and culture;enhance the explicit expression of English key competencies and the cultivation of Thinking Character continually and profoundly in particular.