On The Problems With Secondary School English Teacher’s Instructional Designs

Since the late1940s, China’s basic education curriculum has undergone eight reforms anddevelopment. In2001, China’s Ministry of Education promulgated the “Basic Education CurriculumReform (Trial)” and the curriculum standards of each subject, which marking the eighth of China’s basiceducation curriculum reform (hereinafter referred to as the new curriculum reform) is in full swing. In thepractice of new curriculum reform, course designer is an indispensable role of teachers. Thus, instructionaldesign as a core content of teacher’s professional development has become an important study field of thenew curriculum reform.“Teacher Education Curriculum Standards (Trial)” Indicates that secondaryschool teachers should study the curriculum standards and textbooks of secondary school and research theinstructional design of each subject in secondary school.(Ministry of Education,2011).“National trainingplan curriculum standard (Trail)” stresses that teachers should be trained from several aspects, whichinclude the design capacity of teaching objectives, teaching difficult points and teaching procedures ofEnglish subject.(Ministry of Education,2012).This study is a case study of Xinxiang County Senior High School. First of all, the author made28classroom observations of this senior high school, and analyzed the corresponding28instructional designs,which aims to discover the current situation of English teacher’s designing in teaching objectives andteaching strategies. Then, the author researched the problems of teaching objectives and teaching strategiesof this senior high school’s English teachers, and proposed some referential suggestions to further improveteacher’s instructional design ability.Based on instructional design, the research proposes two questions:1. What problem exists in secondary school English teacher’s design of teaching objectives?2. What problem exists in secondary school English teacher’s design of teaching strategies?Taking Xinxiang County Senior High school as the research subject, this research can be divided intotwo stages. During the first stage, the author collected28instructional designs by classroom observationand interview. During the second stage, the author made content analysis of the28instructional designs and found out the secondary school English teacher’s designing problems in the aspects of teachingobjectives and teaching strategies.The final results of the research indicate that, under the guidance of new curriculum reform, teacher’sinstructional design capacity has improved. But, there are also some problems in the design of teachingobjectives, such as overly emphasizing on knowledge and skill goals while ignoring process and methods,attitudes and emotional goals; ignoring the difference of the students; mistaking the teaching subject andusing vague action verbs in the statement of teaching objectives. In terms of teaching strategies, there areproblems of too much emphasis on low level questions and too much stress on knowledge questions in thequestion designing procedure of secondary school English teachers. During the process of teachingprocedures design, Junior high school English teachers pay more attention to cultivate students’comprehensive language using ability, while Senior high school English teachers are more concerned onthe cultivation of students’ objectives of language knowledge; The secondary school English teacher’sdesign ability of setting authentic context still need to be improved. The secondary school English teachersalso lack awareness of teaching reflection and teaching evaluation design, meanwhile, they are not able toeffectively use the appropriate teaching modes in the practice of instructional design. In terms of teachingorganization forms, teachers can use classroom organization, group cooperation and individual learningconjunctively, which obviously indicates teachers’ teaching idea of treating students as the main body ofclass learning.This research consists of five chapters.Chapter1, the introduction. It mainly concerns the research background, research significance and thestructure of the research.Chapter2, the literature review. Firstly, the author presents definitions of the core concepts, whichinclude instructional design, teaching aims design, teaching strategies, etc. Then, the author analyzed theresearch status of instructional design, teaching objectives design and teaching strategies home and abroad.Chapter3, the design proposal of the research. It includes research questions and objectives, theresearch Subject, the research methods and procedures.Chapter4, the main part of the research. It presents the research results of each stage. Chapter5，the conclusion. It concerns the research findings, the research suggestions and theresearch limitations.