A Study Of English Curriculum Policy For Chinese High School From The Perspective Of Language-in-Education Planning

Language-in-education planning, as one of the three main kinds of Language Planning, is believedto be the most important ways of carrying out language practice and thus achieve language changes.As a transition between the English curriculum policy for compulsory education and college, theEnglish curriculum policy for high school plays a great part in China’s basic curriculum reform, alsobecomes the major part in the language-in-education planning. The English curriculum policy mainlyconsists of high school English curriculum standards, textbook policies and college entranceexamination policies. High school English curriculum standards is considered to be the core and thebasis of compiling English textbooks and designing English entrance examinations.Based on theories formulated by Kaplan and Baldauf (1997), the characteristics of the fourcountries of high school English curriculum policy were analyzed with the guidance of differentlanguage-in-education planning, including the USA, the Netherlands, Japan and Korea. The historicaldevelopment of China’s high school English curriculum policies were reviewed since1949, the highschool English curriculum standards, textbooks policies and English entrance examination policiesincluded. The questionnaires and interviews were employed to investigate the attitudes and opinionsof teachers and students in6high schools in Lai Bin, Guangxi province. The statistics collected werethen analyzed by SPSS17.0to do frequency analysis. Its findings suggest that the Normal SeniorEnglish Curriculum2003(on trail) ignores the form and content of teacher training and the real-lifeneeds of students’ language learning; that English textbooks has a long revising cycle and theexercises and culture teaching has a lapse of orientation, not good for improving students’ competenceof critical thinking; that there is a distance between the design of the English entrance examinationsand the goal of cultivating students’ integrating skills of using English language. Some suggestions foroptimization and improvement were put forward on the basis of language-in-education. First, thehierarchical and fined curriculum goals should be worked out based on a full consideration of thedemands of teachers and students. Second, more Chinese native culture should be added to the seniorEnglish textbooks and the exercises to cultivate students’ critical thinking should be highlighted.Third, the types of questions should be emphasizing on developing the students’ abilities of usinglanguage.Language-in-education planning is the most important for the optimization of the Englishcurriculum policy for high school. High school English curriculum standards, textbook policies andcollege entrance examination policies should be integrated into the language-in-education planning system, which is a preferred and viable strategy to realize the “package” program of Englisheducation from primary to college, and thus improving the quality and efficiency of the Englishteaching and learning in high school.