A Study On Strategies Of The Junior-senior English Transition Teaching

Teachers play an important role in transition teaching. Recently quite a few experts and scholars both at home and abroad have been exploring how to complement transition teaching from different angels and have made some achievements. Many English teachers have researched into the junior-senior English transition teaching, which is very helpful for other senior high English teachers and their teaching as well. However, their research is mainly experience, which lacks theoretical support and further study. Thus,based on the related research and theories, the present study takes Class 1603 and Class 1604 from Grade One, Changning No.1 Middle School in Hunan Province as research subjects. The former is an experimental class while the latter is a control class, thus a teaching experiment has been conducted. This study tries to address the following three questions.1. Can the strategies employed in this study contribute to students' English studies?2. How can Senior One English teachers contribute to students' cohesion of basic English knowledge between junior and senior high schools?3. How can Senior One English teachers help students improve their listening,speaking, reading and writing skills during the period of the junior-senior transition teaching?This thesis is an empirical study, the specific procedures of which are as follows.First, a questionnaire was conducted on students' basic information, in hope of knowing about their state of English learning. Later, based on the Teachability Hypothesis Theory and the Zone of Proximal Development Theory, some practical teaching strategies suited for students' real situations were raised for the experimental class. The duration of the experiment was about eleven weeks. The junior-senior English transition teaching,designed for the integration of students' junior basic knowledge and language skills into senior high English learning, was conducted in the experimental class, while there was no such special transition in the control class. After the experiment, the same questionnaire was conducted again in both the classes. It was found that students had made obvious progress in their attitude towards English learning motivation, self-study competence and their feelings about English study. It was also proved that students in the experimental class could better adapt to senior high English learning. After the mid-term examination,the SPSS statistics software was applied to the analysis of the students' grades both in the first entrance examination before the experiment and the mid-term examination after the experiment, with the purpose of validating the effectiveness of the junior-senior English transition teaching. At last, a random sampling of 15 students from the experimental class were invited to have an interview, aiming to know students' opinions on it.Findings of the study can be summarized as follows.1. The strategies in this study applied to junior-senior English transition teaching are practical and efficient, which greatly contribute to students' studies.2. Efficient teaching strategies concerning pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar have contributed to the cohesion of students' basic knowledge.3. Efficient combination of listening and speaking strategies helps students improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, and so does the combination of reading and writing.Considering these research findings and the present situation of the students, from the aspect of an English teacher, five pedagogical implications are drawn as follows. First,teachers should study both junior and senior English textbooks as well as both the curriculum standard so as to raise their awareness of transition teaching. Second, teachers should communicate more with students so as to promote their adaptation to senior school life psychologically. Third, teachers should attach more importance to the learning guide so as to cultivate students' learning strategies. Fourth, teachers should advocate the awareness of self-study so that they can develop their own awareness of self-thinking and creativity. Fifth, teachers should improve their own professional qualities and set a good example to their students.