A Comparative Study Of Open And Conventional English Classroom Pedagogical Practices In Senior Secondary Schools

In2001, the Ministry of Education in China implemented the New English Curriculumand Pedagogy Standards which aim to develop students’ ability to use English in real lifesituation. In order to summarize and demonstrate the fruits and experience of national MiddleSchool English Curriculum Reform, the National English Teachers’ Association (NETA)provide demonstration classroom teaching for other teachers in the National Middle SchoolEnglish Teaching demonstration workshops. The workshops facilitate the communication ofCurriculum Reform between experimentation area and the other areas to improve the overallcompetence of English teachers of Middle School. By providing the models of excellentEnglish classroom pedagogical practices, NETA expect to explore effective teaching modelsaccording to the current situation of China. So in this paper I compare open classes which arechosen from these demonstration classes with the conventional classes which are selectedrandomly in a senior high school in Jilin Province in order to draw some implications forimproving teaching practices.This thesis aims to investigate the differences of pedagogical practices between openand conventional classes from the perspective of sociocultural theory. Through quantitativeand descriptive analysis of ten open classes and ten conventional classes by the instrument ofthe English Classroom Coding Scheme, the results of this study is listed as follows:(1) Openclasses provide students more student-centered classroom activities, while there are moreteacher-centered classroom activities in conventional classes.(2)One prominent feature ofteacher talk in open classes is large percent of procedural talk, and teachers in conventionalclasses spend more time on curriculum-related talk.(3) Open classes focus more on languageuse, while the conventional classes focus more on language form.(4) In the aspect ofstudent’s language skills, the open classes focus more on productive skills which are speakingand writing compared to the conventional classes where the receptive skills are moreemphasized than their productive skills.(5) In open classes students produce more sustainedoral response, while students in conventional classes produced more short oral response andoral translation.Thus, the implications of this research are:(1) Firstly, teacher should organize a varietyof student-centered activities to promote students’ ability to use English in real life situation.(2) Secondly, teachers should provide scaffoldings according to the zone of proximal development of students in order to facilitate the student’s foreign language learning.