A Study Of The Current Situation Of Classroom English Learning Activities In A Senior High School From The Perspective Of The Activity-based Approach To English Learning

After the Framework of Core Competencies and Values for Chinese Students’ Development was released,the English subject revised its senior high school curriculum standards accordingly in 2017(the New English Curriculum Standards or the NECS)and set its specific goal as to develop students’ English subject core competencies consisting of language ability,cultural awareness,thinking skills and learning capacity.To develop students’ core competencies,the NECS also revised its curricular content and proposed the curricular content composed of six elements that are closely bound together.Besides,the NECS also proposed a new approach to the cultivation of core competencies,that is,the Activity-based Approach to English learning(AAEL).AAEL makes it clear that activity is the basic form of English learning.The learning activity is erected as the bridge between the curricular content and the curricular goal.The NECS clearly indicates that English learning activity is supposed to integrate the six elements of the curriculum content,and incorporate activities of various levels,which consist of perceiving and understanding activities,applying and practicing activities,and transferring and creating activities.However,in practical instructions,the teachers in the author’s school find themselves overwhelmed by the new concept and lost in whether the activity they have designed and conducted is consistent with AAEL activity.To tackle this urgent and practical issue,this research focuses its attention on the overall situation of the current English learning activity in this school and its consistency with AAEL activity.On the basis of Activity Theory,Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives,the Input Hypothesis,the Interaction Hypothesis and the Output Hypothesis,this research aims to answer the following questions:(1)What is the overall situation of the classroom English learning activities in this school?(2)Are the activities consistent with the ones proposed by AAEL? To obtain an objective and comprehensive understanding of the classroom English learning activities,this study adopts the classroom observation,questionnaire and interview,all of which were conducted at Dongguan Tangxia Shuilin School.The observation was conducted in four Senior 2 classes,and a total of 102 activities in 28 periods were collected and analyzed.The questionnaire was carried out among 220 Senior 2 students,and the interview was implemented among four teachers and eight students.The study shows the following results.(1)In this school,the activities in the reading and writing sessions relatively more completely cover all requirements in terms of the content and the process,whereas the ones in the vocabulary and grammar sessions are generally devoid of thematic exploration and the creative application of what is learned.Generally speaking,the activities in this school are found teacher-centered,form-focused and input-oriented to varying degrees.Moreover,in terms of the content,students in this school achieve relatively higher in the meaning aspect than in the language aspect;in terms of the process,they achieve relatively higher at the perceiving and understanding stage than at the applying and practicing stage and at the transferring and creating stage.However,on the whole,the students in this school only “partly” achieve the desired level in terms of the content and the process.(2)Current English learning activities in this school are partly consistent with AAEL activity.It is found that only a small percentage of activity sequences in the reading and writing sessions were identified to be consistent in terms of both the content and the process.In the vocabulary and grammar sessions,many activities were devoid of thematic exploration.In some other reading and writing sessions,the primary focus is on understanding the text content,and the other groups of activities can rarely be seen.In view of the limited contributions the current activities make,this study advocates that in this school,the consistency of the current activity with AAEL activity should be improved.On the basis of the findings of the research,the author puts forward some pedagogic suggestions.First,the teachers should update their outlook on the value of the English subject and take as their primary focus developing students’ English subject core competencies.Second,thematic exploration should be taken as the priority to integrate the six elements of the content.Third,the teachers should make their activities learner-centered and on this basis,expand students’ activity time by adding applying and practicing activities,and transferring and creating activities.Fourth,the students should be encouraged to participate in the activities of expressing themselves,that is,students should output what they have learned.There still exist some drawbacks to this study,one of which concerns the limited sample in particular with the listening and speaking sessions and the viewing sessions absent from the observation and Senior 1 and Senior 3 absent from the study due to various reasons.Therefore,this study looks forward to more session types and more grades being included in the future studies.