A Study On English Teaching In Small Class In Junior Middle School

The New curriculum reform has entered the second decade. With the new curriculum in-depth, Class Size Reduction in basic education has become a trend in the development of education reform. The implementation of small class teaching is not only the pursuit of educational equity, but also conducive to achieving the status of students' dominant position. As a reform initiative, small class teaching, adapting to social changes will become one of the important models in quality education in the future. Meanwhile, the current primary and secondary school students declining, and educational resources continuously enrich has provided possibility for small class teaching.As a linguistic subject, the interaction in English class is more often than in other subjects, which requires the class size smaller. In small classes, the frequency and efficiency in language practice is much increased and improved which can not be compared in large classes. Moreover, it provides more opportunities to group cooperative learning, stratified teaching and other effective teaching methods.However, the small class teaching in China is just in the exploration stage, many of experiments are simply reducing the number of students. Teachers haven't enough useful experience and reference. Many teachers still get used to the traditional teach methods in large classes. If the form of small classes can not combine with effective teaching methods, then it is hard to play the advantage of small class teaching. And the huge invest in small class is only increasing the cost of education for nothing. So, what is the current situation of small class teaching in English in junior middle school? Compared with a large class does it really have unparalleled advantages as it is expected? Has English teachers taken full advantage of Small Class Teaching as a platform to carry out stratified teaching, group cooperative teaching and other teaching modes? Has students played dominant role in small class?With these questions the writer took English teaching in small classes in Wuhan Experimental Foreign Languages School as an example to investigate the current situation of English teaching in small class.In order to answer the research questions, questionnaires for the students, interview for the teachers and in-class observation were employed. The major findings were summarized as follows:The current situation of small class teaching in English in junior middle school is not so satisfied. The effect of small class teaching is not as good as it's expected. Teachers in small classes still get used to the teaching model in traditional large class. Effective teaching models like stratified teaching and group cooperative teaching are not fully used. In class, students haven't played the dominant role completely. The role of the teachers is changing from the controller to helper. But because of not assuring to the students'ability, and because of their traditional educational concepts, they always wander between the two roles.