A Study Of Junior High School Students' Participation In Extracurricular Tutoring Of English

Extracurricular tutoring in China started in the 1980 s,flourished in the 1990 s,and continues to thrive today.Since the late 1970 s,a lot of people have experienced a “fever of going abroad” in China.Driven by the “going abroad craze”,English education has attracted much attention.In 1995,English teaching was widely introduced into primary and secondary schools in China,and the interest and enthusiasm of students and parents in English learning was constantly promoted and stimulated.Various kinds of English extracurricular tutoring institutions have sprung up,and the number of students who participated in English tutoring is increasing constantly.The ministry of education continuously implemented the “reduce the burden of ten thousand miles” activities to reduce the pressure of students and the workloads of schools,there still existed many students who are learning and studying in extracurricular tutoring institutions after school.This phenomenon also appears in other countries and becomes a social hot spot.In this background,it is necessary to study the present situation of junior high school students' extracurricular English tutoring in order to provide suggestions for school education.With the help of the methods of questionnaires and interviews,this thesis was conducted step by step.The respondents were 280 students from grade one to grade four of a Yantai middle school.There are 13 interviewees which consists of five school teachers,two directors of extracurricular English tutoring institution,two tutors and four parents.This thesis aimed to discuss two research questions: What is the status quo of the junior high school students' participation in extracurricular tutoring of English? Are there any major differences between extracurricular tutoring of English and English teaching at schools?Based on the research results,it is found that:(1)To begin with,there are nearly half of the students who are in elementary school start to participate in the extracurricular tutoring of English due to the exams which they experienced from elementary to junior middle school.They spent at least two hours on extracurriculartutoring of English within one week.The students passed the skills test and enrolled the extracurricular tutoring institution which provided the special services for them.The effect of improving grades,course characteristics and teaching methods are the main factors for students to choose one proper extracurricular English tutoring institution.What is more,more than 50% students who participated in the extracurricular tutoring of English because of the need of improving their grades in the entrance exams,that is to say,junior high schools students are forced by the pressure of entrance exams to participate in English extracurricular tutoring.However,there are still many students who participated in the training of English extracurricular tutoring institutions due to their strong interests in learning English.In addition,there are some students who participated in the extracurricular English tutoring institutions as their parents' demands or caused by herd mentality.(2)Furthermore,from the emotional engagement dimension,junior high school students like their classmates and classes more than that in extracurricular tutoring institutions.From the perspective of students' studying behaviors,students are able to be better prepared for English classes in school,participating in class activities and finishing homework than that in extracurricular tutoring institutions.Furthermore,junior high school students believed that they can acquire more useful knowledge in the extracurricular tutoring institutions in the comparison research between schools' education and extracurricular tutoring.Half of the students believed that the teaching content of the extracurricular tutoring institutions is roughly the same as that of the schools,while 10% of the students advocated that the content is exactly the same.In terms of the difficulty of tutoring institutions,almost half of the students thought that the contents of extracurricular tutoring institutions are more difficult than that at school.Based on the above findings,the following countermeasures are proposed in this thesis:(1)From the perspective of schools,it is necessary to change the assessment methods and optimize the contents of English textbooks and increase the investment in education.(2)From the perspective of the market of extracurricular English tutoring agencies,it is necessary to improve the service quality of English tutoring agencies andthe professional levels of teachers,at the meantime,government should put the strict restrictions on the entrance of the extracurricular tutoring institutions.(3)From the perspective of family and society,parents and students should have a correct attitude to prevent blind obedience,and the whole society should also create a good public atmosphere.