On Senior English Teaching Adaptability to The New Curriculum Reform

Abstract: The Educational Ministry promulgated the ‘Full-time General High School English Curriculum Standards’ in 2003. How to adapt to the change better has become the research topic for every teacher. This article aims to explore some specific strategies to improve teachers’ adaptability to the new reform through a brief analysis of the real teaching and learning situation and the probable reasons for the current English teaching.

Keywords: Senior English teaching ；Adaptability； New Curriculum Standards

With the rapid development of both economy and society, education has been placed in a more important position. Since 2003, the Ministry of Education launched a new round of curriculum reform. It has made some great changes in terms of new ideas, new standards, new teaching concepts and methods, new teaching materials as well as new assessment methods..

However, in reality, the implementation of the New Curriculum Standards has confronted many difficulties due to some reasons, making it hard for the teachers and students to adapt to the new reform.

Firstly, In the process of real teaching practice, the explanation of language points and grammatical structures still take up most of the class time. Secondly, some of the teachers still present their lessons by keeping themselves as the center of teaching. Thirdly, although most of the teachers have a good command of English, there are few teachers anticipating any researches about teaching .In addition, some of the teachers have little knowledge of managing a class and don’t know many theories about teaching. Fourthly, not all the teachers can get enough effective chances of receiving training. Fifthly, nowadays, a great number of students are concerned about the ways that can help them to get high marks in the future examinations. Besides, many teachers mentioned that a great many of students could not freely and fluently express themselves in English because their limited English level. Sixthly, nowadays the results of examinations are still considered as one of the most important means to assess the effectiveness of senior high school teaching.

From the real teaching practice, we can draw the conclusion that there are really some distance between the requirements of new curriculum reform and the real practice.

However, no matter how difficult it is for teachers to adapt to the new curriculum reform, they have to make adjustments to meet the needs of the new curriculum reform. Some effective ways of improving this situation will be put forward as follows;

1. From the aspect of teacher

1.1Changing teachers’ concepts of teaching

.Firstly, when presenting lessons, teachers shouldn’t keep speaking all the time without giving students the chances of taking part in the class activities and expressing their own opinions. Secondly, Teachers should try to inspire the motivation and interest of the students by holding various activities, such as English corner, English speaking contest and so on. Thirdly, English teachers should not only give guidance in students' pronunciation, intonation, speed but also provide more chances and create a relaxing and harmonious atmosphere for the students to practice English. Fourthly, Teacher should also have the concept of lifelong learning, enriching their professional knowledge and skills constantly.

1.2 Improving teachers’ professional competence

Teachers can take part in some related lectures for teaching or various kinds of training. Or they can buy some books to study by themselves. They can also hold various experience exchanges in which teachers can exchange and improve themselves. Besides, teachers can learn a lot from classroom observation. The teachers can go to different classes to listen to different teachers’ lessons. Or the teachers can further study by using the internet.

1.3 Having different forms of assessment

Instead of judging the students only by their marks, teachers should make good use of effective assessing methods to capture the bright spots of student, and give more praise and less criticism, more positive judgments and less negative comments.

1.4 Improving teachers’ awareness of reflection on teaching

There are some approaches to improving the awareness of reflection on teaching: (1) Write reflective notes after having classes. This will help teachers find out the problems that existing in the process of teaching and get to know the effectiveness of teaching. (2) Write teaching journals regularly. Write or record the accounts of teaching experiences, including other teachers’ experience.

2. From the aspect of school and social environment

The school should profound new curriculum reform, providing more chances of receiving further education for teachers. School should also provide more training programs for the teachers. As for the school, Instead of assessing teachers only by students’ marks, school should assess teachers from a various aspects. As for the society, On the one hand, the society especially parents should change their traditional belief that a student’s ability, a teacher’s teaching and a school’s teaching quality can be assessed only through marks. On the other hand, the system of the College Entrance Exam needs to be adjusted to be more reasonable.

In the end, the new curriculum reform is the trend that all the teachers have to follow. By providing the ways of improving the situation, it is hoped that teachers can adapt to the new reform well.