A Survey Study On English Classroom Environment In Secondary Vocational School

In recent years,with the rapid development of politics,economy and culture,our country has put forward higher demands for the cultivation of talents and carried out a series of educational reforms to promote a leap in quality.In 2010,The Outline of National Medium-and long-term Program for Education Reform and Development(2010-2020)has put forward the relevant requirements for the development of vocational education.Many a vocational school constantly explores the way to improve their education and has made some achievements.However,in practical teaching,there are still some problems that need to be solved,especially English teaching in vocational schools.The main channel of foreign language teaching in our country is classroom learning,it is obvious that creating a positive classroom environment is extremely important for foreign language teaching and learning.Fan Chunlin(2005)points out: “As the sum of various physical,social and psychological factors existing in the process of classroom teaching,classroom environment affects the development,quality of teaching activities.”A large number of scholars have conducted numerous researches onclassroom environment since the 1930 s.However,relatively few researches on English classroom environment in vocational schools,especially in secondary vocational schools are conducted.Therefore,the present study intends to investigate English classroom environment where secondary vocational school students are,aiming to get a more comprehensive understanding of the current situation of English classroom environment in secondary vocational school and provide some suggestions for the improvement of English classroom environment and teaching quality.The present study attempts to answering the following research questions:1.What is the current situation of English classroom environment in secondary vocational school? Are there any differences in students’ understanding of English classroom environment in different genders,grades and majors?2.What are the factors that may affect the English classroom environment of secondary vocational school?The present study selects the students in three different majors in grade one and two from the Business and Tourism Vocational School(Secondary vocational school)in Hohhot as the research subjects.The questionnaire mainly refers to the Middle School English Classroom Environment Inventory(MSECEI)compiled by Liu Liyan and Liu Yongbing(2010)and make some adjustments on the basis of considering the speciality of secondary vocational school students after discussing with the supervisor.Thefinal version questionnaire consists of eight dimensions with 40 items.As a result,322 questionnaires are distributed and 304 valid questionnaires are collected.With the software SPSS24.0,the author further processes and analyzes the collected data.Next,the author conducts a semi-structured interview with four English teachers and observes the normal English classes so as to explore the factors affecting English classroom environment.Through the processing and analysis of collected data,major findings of the present study are showed as follows: first of all,the current situation of English classroom environment in secondary vocational school is not ideal enough and students’ satisfaction with their English classroom environment is in a medium level.In addition,there is no significant difference on the understanding of the English classroom environment in different gender and grade.However,there are significant differences in the understanding of English classroom environment among students in different majors.Next,the main factors affecting the English classroom environment of secondary vocational school generally are family,social and the situation of teacher and students.Such as students’ family economic situation or family members’ educational background,the current educational policy for vocational schools,the examination-oriented educational system,the situation of teachers’ teaching and students’ learning and so on.On how to improve the English classroom environment and English teaching quality of secondary vocational school,the present study proposessome pedagogical implications which are meaningful to improve the English classroom environment and optimize the quality of English teaching from different subjects’ perspectives and to some extent enriches the theoretical researches on classroom environment.