Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Research
Nowadays, the world is in a period of great development and reform, showing the trend ofworld multi-polarization, economic globalization and informatization. English is the most widelyused languages in the world, which has become an important tool for internationalcommunication, technological and cultural exchanges. As one of the most important informationcarriers, English is an important part of the quality of education，and plays a prominent role ineducation development strategy, therefore, we can’t emphasize the significance of English toomuch.
“Ordinary high school education in China's mission is to promote the development ofstudents comprehensive and have inpidual character education for the students to adapt to thesocial life and career development to prepare, hind lay a foundation for the lifelong developmentof students.”①This requires teachers to focus on the students’ inpidual differences, meet thelearning needs of all levels of students, and guide them to study optimization, to achieveoptimization for the different students' English learning. Facing all, personality development arethe two major characteristics of modern education, it embodies the value of each student, thedevelopment of personalized attaches great importance to humanism. We should not only faceall students, but also respect inpidual differences, so that students with different abilities can beimproved correspondingly. Liu Hui and Sun Ning proposed that “All these require us to adoptdifferent teaching strategies according to different students to adapt to their differentdevelopment”.
In China, almost all schools are pided into grades by age, piding school districtaccording to resident, nearby admission to education. Although relatively close in age, everystudent has his own growth and development velocity, the influence of the surrounding familyenvironment will make the difference among students. With the students’ growing, thedifferences among them become more pronounced, a group of students with their own obviousdifferences gathered in a class group, the setting of teaching objectives in the process ofpreparing lessons for senior high school English teachers, the arrangement of teaching contentand the design of exercises are often based on the average level of students in the class, caringfor most students but ignoring the brightest and the worst students is common phenomenon inthe senior English class, some students became accompanying students to read and take exams,students with good academic may think the content too simple and unchallenged, students withpoor academic are unable to understand, losing confidence because of left behind. There is nodoubt that traditional class teaching system has its advantages, but there is a downside as well,which is difficult to solve the problem of learning differences between students, some studentscan not keep up, which has a certain negative effect on their confidence. Therefore, there is anurgent need for a teaching method to combine proper teaching mode to all students according totheir aptitude.
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1.2 Purpose of the Research
The thesis tries to analyze the deficiency of the current high school traditional teaching, andintroduces stratified teaching into real classroom, gradually narrows the gap between differentlevels of students, so as to overall improve the students' English achievement through theresearch and practice of stratified English teaching in senior high school. “The basic idea of thenew curriculum is to pay attention to the development of students' personality.”①New EnglishCurriculum Standard requires teachers to achieve stratified teaching while teaching, respectingfor inpidual differences in teaching. The implementation of the quality education thought is toadmit the inpidual differences of students, reflecting the principle of teaching students inaccordance with their aptitude, and fully developing the personality and specialty of students. Ineducation, the characteristics of students should be taken into account. Teachers design teachingobjectives for inpidual differences among all students, emphasizing students' learning processand autonomy, attaching importance to the practice and application of English learning.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Related Studies of Stratified Teaching
2.1.1 Relevant Studies of Stratified Teaching Abroad
The stratified teaching in the United States evolved in the 18th century. Historically, it hasgone through four stage: formation and development stage (from the mid-18th century to the late1920s), periods of decline and silence (from the 1930s to the second world war), the recoveryperiod (from the second world war to the 1950s) and prosperity and persity (from the 1950s tothe 1990s).
1. The formation and development of stratified teaching (from the mid-18th century to thelate 1920s).
The germination of stratified teaching comes from American educator Harris, who foundedthe theory of elastic schedule, the theory is the embryonic form of stratified teaching. Hebelieved that the teacher should explain teaching material to the students in the class before theimplementation of a stratified teaching, after the students have fully understood the teachingmaterial, they are given a test. The students are pided into three levels: level A, level B andlevel C, according to the test results, the students in the first level have relatively good grades,that is, they have a good understanding of the teaching material and the students whose gradesare not qualification are included in the third level, students whose grades are in between areplaced on the second tier, then the teacher assign corresponding exercises to the two levelstudents according to the student's understanding ability, level students who have poorcomprehension ability should give inpidual instruction to students. When the third levelstudents has basic understanding of the content of the teaching material, then teachers start thenew teaching material to the entire class. In this way, students are pided into different levelsaccording to their grades and then taught according to their levels, which is the original stratifiedteaching. In the late 19th century, this kind of stratified teaching form formed a certain impact onthe traditional teaching form. By the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, thestratified teaching form of ability class was adopted in America, Germany and other countries.Ye Lin held an idea that that at the same time, inpidualized and stratified teaching forms suchas Dalton system and Venaka system are also emerging.①With the rise of the ProgressiveEducation Movement in the late 20th century, new forms of stratified teaching have beendeveloped and promoted in various countries.
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2.2 Concept Definition
From the perspective of teaching plan, Gray Gregory and Caroline Chapman believed thatstratified teaching means that teachers skillfully prepare different plans to meet students'different needs in the classroom.②Roger Tomlinson saw it as a way to transform multipleteaching pals, and Lawrence Brown defined it as a system of multilevel curriculum planning.③From the perspective of teaching implementation, Seth a. parsons and others believe thatstratified teaching is not only about planning, but also teachers are adaptable in teaching in theclassroom.④Wang Guimei put forward that stratified teaching aims at promoting thedevelopment of maximum validity for all students. In terms of teaching, students at all levels areexpected to have successful experiences.⑤Cao Qinwen stated that stratified teaching is ateaching method applied in classroom teaching situation. Students are pided according todifferent learning abilities, psychological features and cognitive levels so that they caneffectively master the basic knowledge and gain the ability to improve.⑥He Fang believed thatthe real purpose of stratification is to focus on “the development of students, promoting thedevelopment of students, step by step, the overall improvement.⑦Zhang Jieting considered thatstratified teaching is to design different teaching objectives and teaching situations based on thepersities of learners in different degrees in order to improve every student by their own efforts.As we can see above, scholars and experts in the past defined stratified teaching from differentteaching attributes.①As a matter of fact, other people have defined the concept in other ways,but clearly the basic requirements are pretty much the same, the whole teaching conceptemphasizes the inpidual differences as well as specific needs.
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3.1 Theoretical Foundation of Stratified Teaching................................... 13
3.1.1 Zone of Proximal Development Theory........................ 13
3.1.2 Multiple Intelligence Theory..............................14
Chapter Four Research Methodology...................................17
4.1 Research Questions................................. 17
4.2 Research Subjects................................17
Chapter Five Results and Discussion................................ 39
5.1 Data Results and Data Discussion of the Achievement in EC..............................39
5.1.1 Data Analysis of Pre-test..........................39
5.1.2 Data Analysis of Post-test............................. 41
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1 Data Results and Data Discussion of the Achievement in EC
5.1.1 Data Analysis of Pre-test
In order to prove whether the learning achievement of the experimental class and thecontrol class had changed after a semester of different English teaching and learning methods,the results of the experimental class and the control class were compared. At the beginning ofthis study, predictive tests were conducted in both experimental and control classes to checkstudents' English achievement and find out the differences between them. The aim of pre-testwas to see if there was any difference on the original English achievement. The full mark of theirexamination paper is 150 all the scores were all processed by SPSS 22.0. The results of pre-testwere presented as follow:
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Chapter Six Conclusions
6.1 Major Findings
Firstly, stratified teaching can improve students' English achievement. After a semester ofstratified teaching, in the process of stratified teaching activities, the students' cooperativelearning group and benign competition, the average score of class (3) Grade 2 was improved, themore significant progress reflected on the pass rate and low rate of change. The reason is thatused in the process of stratified teaching target, teaching activities, homework, teachingassessment, make each level of student learning objectives, learning activities, the difficulty ofthe homework is in the scope of development zone, can through their own efforts or the teacherand companion's help to achieve learning objectives. The activities among students enablestudents to participate in the assessment activities, emphasize the students' position as the subjectin the teaching class, enhance the students' healthy competition awareness, cooperationawareness between groups and sense of collective honor, and also cultivate students' emotionalattitude and values according to the requirements of the new curriculum standards. Teacherschoose homework suitable for students at different levels based on their foundation, which alsoimproves the learning efficiency of students. Students of level A do not need to repeat thelanguage knowledge they have mastered, and students of level C don’t need to waste time ondifficult and progressive homework, so as to improve the teaching efficiency and improve theirEnglish achievement.
Secondly, stratified teaching can enhance students' interest and confidence in learningEnglish. Qian Yu stated that Interest is the additive to study and work, and the study of anycourse needs interest to support.①Class stratified teaching focuses on cultivating students'interest and giving full play to students' dominant role, so as to mobilize the learning interest andenthusiasm of each student, especially the poor students, good learning motivation is animportant condition for them to learn English. The most realistic and active component oflearning motivation is learning interest, which can not only make students concentrate on andthink positively, and in the state of full interest in learning everything, often quickly grasp themain points of knowledge, and can deeply remember. The stratified teaching in the class viewsthe differences between students with a positive attitude, emphasizes that the teachingrequirements adapt to the differences of students, and motivate students to participate in learningto the maximum extent. In order to strive for a higher level, students have active learningbehaviors at various levels, which is a manifestation of effective participation and a force forsustainable development of learning in the future.
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