An Empirical Research Of Life Education In High School English Teaching

The greatest American’s thinker, writer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson maintained in1837that " A great soul, will strengthen his thought and life." This sentence profoundly reveals thatthe status of thought and life are equal. However, when we are armed ourselves withknowledge, we tend to neglect the education of life. With the development of social economy,science and technology changes with each passing day, which provide more favorableconditions for teenagers to understand the world, to increase their knowledge and to widentheir vision. At the same time, the social negative factors, such as suicide, homicide, violencealso affect teenagers’ moral concept, behavior and habits, and the weak life consciousness, thelosing of meaning of life also affect the physical and mental healthy growth of teenagers. Allthese warn us that we should penetrate the life education into high school English teaching,which is in order to make students respect life and treat life as most needed part in the processof education. In addition, traditional English classroom is mainly limited to the form thatteachers are the leading role of "teaching", and students are the supporting role as "recipient".Both teachers and students just focus on the grammar of English curriculum and students’performance in the exams. Meanwhile with the implementation of the curriculum reform,high school English curriculum pays more attention to students’ emotion, so that the studentscan improve their abilities of independent thinking and judgment, and develop the ability tocommunicate and cooperate with others, and enhance their ability of cross-culturalunderstanding and the ability of intercultural communication, set up the correct view of life,view of world and view of values, as well as enhance their social sense of responsibility,improve their humanities in the process of English learning. Therefore it requires that Englishteaching should pay more attention to life education. In this paper, I make high school Englishteaching as a focal point, and life education as the breakthrough point, then from theperspective of caring students’ emotion about life, to discuss the necessity of introducing lifeeducation into the process of English teaching.The study addresses the following three research questions:1. What are the concepts about life education that teachers and students in high schoolEnglish class show?2. What is the present situation of life education implemented in senior high school Englishclassroom and what reasons cause this situation??3. What are the effective strategies of introducing life education to high school Englishclass? This thesis mainly adopts questionnaires analysis and interviews. Through the statistics andanalysis of the questionnaires and interviews which finished by the participants-teachers andstudents, it can be concluded that what their concepts of life education are, and then I analyzethe present situation, sum up the reason, and suggest the teachers and students make full useof the English teaching materials associated with life education, better permeate life educationinto the high school English classroom.The significance of this thesis is to introduce the research topic of life education into thefield of foreign language teaching, and to explore the content, ways and strategies of lifeeducation through the studying of life education in high school, and to help studentsunderstand, or even grasp the meaning of life, furthermore to respect life, love life, andcherish life. Meanwhile, to improve the quality of life and promote the development ofphysical and mental health of the students.