A Research On English Optional Course In Senior High School

The concept of English optional course first appeared in China in the 1920s. But it was not until the 1990s that China started opening this course formally. During the first years, it has been neglected by most schools due to China's testing system. However, in the year of 2003, China's Ministry of Education issued The National English Curriculum Standards which pointed that the opening of the English optional course aims at carrying out qualified education and creating more chances to practice English. Also, the demanded English optional course is supposed to motive students' interests in learning English and provide more chances for their personalized development. In the background of Curriculum reform, education theorists are more concerned with the English optional course. At the same time, the status of English optional course becomes more and more important.Besides, the opening of English optional course can create more opportunities to help students to consolidate, expand and deepen the knowledge learned in the classroom. English Optional Course can improve listening, speaking, reading and writing ability. It can further stimulate students' interest in learning foreign languages, making students more confidence, helping students to think actively, expanding their knowledge and horizons so that students can get an all-round development. Therefore, the English optional courses can satisfy students' need for physical and mental development. This paper focuses on the development of the English optional course after the issue of The New Curriculum Standards, analyzes some useful experience of how to develop the English optional course both at home and abroad, and mainly investigates and studies the development situation of the English optional course in Xi'an Tieyi Binhe high school's first-grade, and puts forward the preliminary suggestions based on the author's understanding of the reality.Xi'an Tieyi Binhe High school is a young school, and there are 15 grade-one classes and more than 600 students in its senior high school. Nearly 300 students chose to study the English optional course on every Tuesday and Thursday. To investigate the students' attitude towards the English optional course, the author handed out a questionnaire to the 300 students in order to collect their real opinions about the English optional course. Besides, there is one English group leader and nine English teachers who teach the English optional course in grade-one. So the author interviewed the ten teachers to find out the English teachers'attitude towards the English optional course. The author prepared ten questions to interview the attitude of the English group leader and five aspects of the questions to survey the opinions of the other nine teachers. The questions mainly conclude their opinions about the opening the English optional course in high school and their feelings after being an English optional course teacher. What's more, the author used the classroom observation method. The author listened to 10 English optional classes to record the teaching steps of the teachers and the reactions of the students in English optional course to analyze the problems existing in the English optional course.Through this research, the author found that achievements and problems are both exist in the development of the English optional course. The main problems can be divided into three categories:(1) Under the pressure of the college entrance exam, our society and teachers can't pay enough attention to the English optional course. (2) Practical teaching material for the English optional course is in great need. (3) Schools and teachers don't have an available evaluation system to evaluate the results of the English optional course. According to the problems, the author puts forward the countermeasures:(1) Deepen the understanding of the applicability of English. (2) Establish specialized optional course teachers' system. (3) Improve the management and evaluation system.The main content of the thesis consists of five parts.The first part is the introduction. It introduces the topic background of the research. Besides, this part also explains the purpose and significance of the study. The second part is literature review. It defines the definition of the optional course and explains the theoretical basis of the optional course. The third part is methodology. It includes four parts:research questions, research subjects, research methods and data collection. This study investigated the teachers and the students in Grade 1 in Xi'an Tieyi Binhe Senior High School who participate in the English optional course. In this part, the author illustrates the process of how to guarantee the reliability and validity of the survey. The fourth part is results and discussion. In this part the author analyzed and discussed the results of the survey, and summrized the phenomenons which existed in the teaching of the English optional course. The last part is conclusion. It illustrates the major findings and the limitations of the study, and puts forward some suggestions about how to improve the development of the English optional course.In a word, the development of the English optional course in senior high school still has a long way to go. But it is the trend of the times and the trend of the education. So how to develop it deserves further study.