An Empirical Study On Integral Unit Teaching Of Senior High School English Based On Big Ideas

With the continuous development of science,technology and culture,the boundaries of various disciplines are constantly expanding,and knowledge is becoming more and more complex.The question "What kind of knowledge should students master?" has attracted the attention of the education field.For this issue,many experts have reached a consensus.They believe that education should not be about teaching "Expert’s Conclusions" but about acquiring "the way how experts think",so that students can transfer what they have learned in school to solve problems in real situations.As a result,the notion of core competence is brought up.The key point of core competence is that students are able to transfer what they have learned to the real world,like knowledge,skills,cognition,emotion and attitude,which many experts have found to be in line with the notion of "Big Idea".The Big Idea can effectively structurise the fragmentary knowledge and skills of disciplines.It is a highly generalized concept that can be transferred to solve different problems.Therefore,the understanding and application of the Big Idea reflects the essential requirements of core literacy.To generate the Big Idea is inseparable from the integral unit teaching approach.The generation of an abstract concept can only be acquired by a certain amount of specific cases.The richer the cases,the stronger the portability.A single lesson is too simple and too short to generate a big concept with depth,nor to explore basic problems and practical applications.Therefore,generating a Big Idea requires the integral unit teaching approach.This study focuses on three questions:(1)Why can Big Ideas be a tool to make core competence come true?(2)What is the implementation path to integral unit teaching of senior high school English based on Big Ideas?(3)Can integral unit teaching of senior high school English based on Big Ideas improve student’s core literacy effectively?To answer these questions,the author tries to apply the integral unit teaching approach of high school English units based on the Big Idea,and selects Module 1,Unit 2 “Exploring English” of FLTRP for teaching practice.Relevant literature was first reviewed to figure out the relationship among core competence,Big Ideas and integral unit teaching.Then,the path of the integral teaching approach of high school English units was explored on the basis of Big Idea.Thirdly,two classes with similar entrance grades were selected for teaching practice.While the traditional approach was implemented in the control class,the integral unit teaching approach was adopted in the experimental class by monitoring the learning process and assessing the outcome,the results of which indicate that the experimental group outperformed the control group.It is then concluded that: 1.Core competence should be emphasized because it meets the requirements of the era.The notion of Big Ideas should be integrated into integral unit teaching to develop the students’ core literacy.2.The path of the integral teaching approach of high school English units based on the Big Idea consists of the five steps:(1)Study the contents and extract the thematic meaning of each text.(2)Extract the Big Idea of the unit theme and language based on the thematic meaning of each text.(3)Extract the Big Idea according to the unit theme and language,;(4)Analyze the learning situation and formulate the goals of the unit and the class period based on the Big Idea of the unit;(5)Implement the integrated design of teaching-learning-assessment based on the unit and the class period goal.3.The integral teaching approach is conducive to improving students’ core literacy and test scores.This study thus provides an operational model for the teaching in the future,and hopefully will provide other front-line teachers with some innovative ideas for teaching the unit and enriching the theory of Big Idea.