A Study On The Application Of Differentiated Instruction In English Teaching In Elementary School

Students are diverse.They have varying backgrounds when they arrive at school;they are different in learning styles,interests,abilities,needs,and emotional and social maturity.An increasing number of teachers start paying attention to these differences,exploring and applying various teaching methods and strategies to address these differences in their classes.Differentiated instruction is one of them.Being different from the conventional unified teaching with unified teaching goals,unified assignments for all students in one class,differentiated instruction customizes learning content,process and/or products to provide students with multiple choices to meet their readiness,interests and learning profiles,and help them make continuous academic progress.The study is guided by the American educator Coral Ann Tomlinson’s philosophy of differentiated instruction and based on the Theory of Multiple Intelligences,revised Bloom’s Taxonomy,educational neuroscience,and zone of proximal development.Having reviewed related literature at home and abroad,the author designs and conducts empirical research in Xining Boya Elementary School.The research tools used in the experiment include questionnaires,interviews,and tests.Firstly,the purpose of the questionnaires is to understand students’ interests,learning styles,multiple intelligences,and their views on English learning and teaching.Secondly,the aim of the one-on-one interview with the three English teachers at Boya Elementary School is to have a general idea of the current English teaching situation,namely the teaching methods and strategies they use in their own classes,the ways how they deal with students’ differences,and how they perceive differentiated instruction.Last but not least,the author uses two tests to compare students’ English performance and prove whether differentiated instruction is effective or not in helping students improve their English performance.Two six-grade classes in Boya Elementary School are chosen in this experiment as experimental class and control class,totally 117 students.The experiment lasts for about four months.The author and their own English teacher work together to design lesson plans and instruct both classes in a way where the experimental class adopts differentiated instruction and the control class still uses their conventional unified instruction.The test scores prove that differentiated instruction can effectively improve students’ English performance.In the pre-test,the experimental class as a whole demonstrates a similar academic English performance as that of the control class.But in the post-test,the mean score of the experimental class is higher than that of the control class,which proves that differentiated instruction is effective.Meanwhile,by analyzing the results of experimental students’ views on English learning and teaching,the author finds growing positive attitudes towards teachers’ instruction,assignments and activities,and classroom environment after the experiment.Having analyzed data and reflected on the whole experiment,the author outlines some enlightenment on differentiated instruction.Teachers who would like to apply differentiated instruction in an elementary English class need to know their students’ differences through multiple paths and respect these differences.Then incorporate these elements into designing differentiated teaching content,process,and product according to students’ readiness,interests and learning profile,scientifically arranging activities,and using diverse teaching strategies.Last but not least,teachers need to keep reflecting on their differentiated instruction experience and cooperating with other teachers to improve teaching skills.