On The Application Of Appreciation Education To Junior English Teaching

Appreciation education is the education with respect for life, which is full of love,vitality and humane consideration. The striking features of appreciation education areits focuses on students’ strengths and good qualities, its subtle way and care forstudents’affect. At present, appreciation education in China has gained widespreadattention, more and more educators try to research on it theoretically and empiricallyfrom different perspectives. Combined with the actual situation of junior schoolEnglish education of our country, relying on the educational philosophy of the newcurriculum, with the related theories as the research framework, the present researchintends to explore how to improve junior school English teaching throughappreciation education. The following questions will be addressed:●What is the present situation of appreciation education in junior English teaching?●What is the attitude and understanding of junior school teachers and studentstowards appreciation education?●How to apply appreciation education effectively to junior school English teaching?In the New English Curriculum Standards issued by the Ministry of Educationin 2001(the trial version), emotional education is set as one of the teaching objectives.This philosophy brings life to the implementation of quality education. And in theyear of 2011, the Ministry of Education issued the Compulsory Education EnglishCurriculum Standards, stressing that English course in the stage of compulsoryeducation combines the dual natures of tool and the humanities. The CurriculumStandards requires that in English teaching, we should not only place emphasis onstudents’ language knowledge and language skills, but also pay more attention to thedevelopment of the students’ emotion and attitude. As it is well known that theessential needs of human nature includes the desire to be recognized and appreciated,respected and understood. Appreciation education is a way to educate with inspiration,which can arouse students’ interest in their study, as well as lay a solid foundation fortheir life journey and personality development. In terms of the characteristics of thepsychological development of junior school students and the essence of English ducation, it is particularly important to apply the appreciation education into Englishteaching. Based on the theories of humanistic education ideology, Pygmalion effectand English Curriculum Standards, this study aims to discuss how to improve thejunior English teaching by applying the appreciation education method.Three research methodologies are applied in the present study, includingliterature review, questionnaires and interview. Through literature reviews, the thesispresents a clear picture of the theories and practice of appreciative education as wellas the status quo of English teaching in junior middle schools. The subjects of thisstudy are the teachers and students from Jinan Shungeng Junior Middle School.Through the questionnaires and interviews, it reveals that most teachers can realizethe importance and necessity of appreciative education, they believe that they havemore or less applied it to their teaching process, and the application of appreciationmethod of teaching in English education can have a favorable effect on teachingresults. As for the students, they are eager to be appreciated, encouraged and guidedby their teachers. However, in reality, the importance of appreciation education stilllacks enough attention, it is still not actually applied in the teaching practice, What ismore urgent is that the specific and effective measures for the implementation ofappreciation education is still not clear.Through investigation and discussion, the present study has found out that as aneducational method, appreciation education can not only improve the teaching qualityeffectively but can also exert an important influence on the mental development of thestudents. Actually, appreciation education accords with personality characteristics ofjunior middle school students and can truly reflect the human-oriented teachingphilosophy. Nevertheless, the study discovers that there are still some difficulties ashow to effectively apply appreciation education and it does have certain limitations. Itis evident that appreciation education can’t solve all the problems in the process ofEnglish teaching. It is sincerely hoped that this research can, in some way, shed lighton the improvement and reform of junior school English teaching of our country.