| In current English teaching situation, many English teachers tend to embrace traditional methods which only emphasize language points in textbooks and teaching is far from students’ lifeworld. English teaching is still teacher-centered ignoring students’ affection and their whole development. However, New Curriculum Standards of English for Junior High Schools published in 2012 point out that English teaching should be student-centered, quality-oriented and back to life. The process of learning is also experiencing life.Considering the current situation and requirements of New Curriculum Standards, the author advocates life-oriented English teaching in junior school based on the theories of life education and humanism. In this innovative English class, teachers design teaching tasks based on students’ experiences in their daily lives according to textbooks. Teaching procedure is designed to activate students’ life experiences in order to acquire new information. And finally what the students learn is applied back to the enrichment of their lives. The class is student-centered, and teachers pay much attention to students’ interest in learning, affection, personalities, and try to form a harmonious teacher-student relationship.The study took 78 students of two classes randomly selected from Grade 8 in No. 11 Middle School in Development Zone of Dalian as subjects. The class with 38 students was chosen as Experimental Class, and the other class with 40 was Control Class. Before the 16 weeks’ treatment, pre-test, questionnaires and interviews were carried out to get a general idea about students’ learning status. Then life-oriented English teaching model was carried out in Experimental Class, which includes one core, life-oriented teaching; six dimensions, life-oriented teaching environment, life-oriented teaching objectives, life-oriented teaching contents, life-oriented teaching methods, flexible ways of learning and diversified evaluation; seven teaching steps, creating life-oriented situation, introducing questions, thinking independently, exchanging ideas, displaying and presenting, generalization and conclusion, evaluation and reflection. After training, there was a post-test, questionnaires and interviews. According to the data analysis, the author finds that students’ English scores of Experimental Class are obviously better than those of Control Class. In addition, in Experimental Class, students’ learning interest is improved. A much more harmonious teacher-student relationship has been formed. Therefore, the conclusion can be made that life-oriented teaching could improve junior school students’ English performance effectively, which also shows humanistic concern and is helpful for students’ whole development. |
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