Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
The value orientation of the basic education curriculum reform in China in 2001 is for the development of every student. This means that we should change the disadvantages of traditional education, such as single goal, teacher orientation, mechanical teaching methods and so on. For the healthy development of every student, students’ scientific literacy must be cultivated in our education. Emphasis is placed on the cultivation of their knowledge and skills, process and methods, and emotional attitudes and values. The New English Curriculum Standards (2011) emphasizes its basic idea that the English curriculum should be oriented to all students and focus on quality education; it pays special attention to each student’s emotion, stimulate their interest in learning English, and help them establish a sense of achievement and self-confidence in learning; students should be highlighted and inpidual differences should be respected. Therefore, Covertly Stratified English Teaching in junior middle school is helpful to implement the basic ideas of the New Curriculum Standards and meet practical needs of curriculum reform. At present, researches on Covertly Stratified Teaching in our country mainly focus on the applied ones combined with disciplines, segments, etc., and changes of students in this discipline or segment under it. However, related studies on the current situation of the implementation of Covertly Stratified Teaching are relatively fewer, let alone junior high school students as research subjects. It’s in junior middle school that the initial and critical polarization appears in students.
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1.2 Research Purpose
This study plans to collect relevant data through questionnaire, classroom observation and interview. From the data analysis, it aims to explore the implementation situation of Covertly Stratified English Teaching in junior middle school, including the understanding of this teaching mode, its practical implementation, teaching effects, and existing problems, and further put forward some suggestions to improve practical English teaching. It will be further in line with the basic educational concept of China’s New English Curriculum Standard that highlights students’ dominant status and respecting students’ inpidual differences, so as to promote the development of every student. Furthermore, this study also aims to enrich English teaching theory and provide reference for English teaching and research in primary and secondary schools.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Related Definitions of Stratified Teaching
2.1.1 Definition and Classification of Stratified Teaching
There are various expressions of Stratified Teaching, such as ability grouping, tracking, streaming, grouping, setting, etc. During the development of Stratified Teaching in history, its connotation and forms have been constantly enriched, and it is difficult to define its concept accurately nowadays. In short, Stratified Teaching means that teachers scientifically pide students into different groups according to their knowledge basis, ability level and potential tendency and treat them differently. These groups get the best development in the appropriate stratification strategy and interaction of teachers (Hu Qingfang, 2016). Stratified Teaching, in fact, has become a general pronoun nowadays, from its initial hierarchical teaching to a variety of forms to adapt to the changing requirements of education and teaching.
Among them, the following modes have a deep influence in educational development:
(a) Class-streaming Teaching: on the premise of maintaining original teaching administrative class, students in several classes are pided into multiple groups based on their knowledge and ability level, so that they can carry out class streaming learning according to their own levels and accept the same content but different breadth and depth of teaching content, while other disciplines continue to be completed in the original administrative class.
(b) Stratified Monitoring: it mainly emphasizes that students choose the corresponding learning level by themselves based on their own learning situations. At the end of the semester, a level-adjustment will be made by school according to students’efforts and the status of follow-up learning in a term.
(c) Ability Grouping: schools pide students into different classes or groups according to their comprehensive ability or overall academic performance, so as to reduce the heterogeneity of groups (Slavin, 1990).
(d) Covertly Stratified Teaching: teachers pide students into different levels in their minds, and then set targeted teaching objectives in different levels, adopt hierarchical teaching, evaluation and other teaching methods to meet practical learning requirements of different students.
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2.2 Theoretical Bases
2.2.1 Optimization of Teaching Process Theory
―Optimization of teaching process‖ put forward by Soviet educator Babanski means that teachers should choose the best scheme to organize the teaching process purposefully, which can ensure that the solution of teaching and educational tasks can achieve the best effect within the specified time (Gu Mingyuan & Meng Fanhua, 2001). ―Optimal‖ is arelative and conditional concept, and different conditions lead to different optimal standards, which requires teachers to arrange teaching contents according to students’ actual learning ability, and to understand the characteristics of various educational viewpoints and methods as well as their appropriate application scope, so as to use them reasonably and selectively. Moreover, the following teaching principles put forward by Babanski are of guiding significance to the forms and purpose effect in Covertly Stratified Teaching (Yang Weiguo, 2013):
Firstly, the principle of teaching acceptability reveals that teaching materials should make students feel challenging to their maximum extent possible. The effective development of teachers’ teaching process, the prominence of teaching emphasis, the adoption of different teaching methods to help students, and so on, which coincides with the fact that Covertly Stratified Teaching requires multi-level teaching methods in different teaching links.
The principle of optimal combination in various teaching organizations requires the optimal combination of the whole class, group work and inpidual forms in teaching organization. The whole-class activities can promote the formation of collective consciousness and the atmosphere of mutual assistance; group learning activities meet the needs of students with different learning basics to a large extent; inpidual forms of activities require teachers to help students use their maximum ability to complete learning tasks independently. Therefore, it is particularly necessary to realize the Covertly Stratified Teaching with the optimal combination of the three forms of teaching organization.
The principle of promoting active learning requires teachers to persify teaching methods to ensure that students at different levels can actively participate in learning activities, adopt persified teaching activities to improve students’ enthusiasm for learning materials, maintain appropriate help for students, and encourage students at different levels to develop independent learning ability.
Table 3.1 Reliability Statistics
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Chapter 3 Research Design .................................... 16
3.1 Research Subjects ........................................... 16
3.2 Research Questions ................................. 16
3.3 Research Instruments ................................................... 16
Chapter 4 Results Analysis and Discussion .............................. 21
4.1 Results Analysis and Discussion on Questionnaire .................................... 21
4.2 Results Analysis and Discussion on Classroom Observation ..................... 29
4.3 Results Analysis and Discussion on Interview Record ............................... 31
Chapter 5 Main Findings and Suggestions ....................... 44
5.1 Main Findings .............................................. 44
5.2 Pedagogic Suggestions ......................................... 45
Chapter 5 Main Findings and Suggestions
5.1 Main Findings
Through the analysis of the relevant data collected in questionnaire, combined with the results of interview and classroom observation, the following main findings are summarized.
1) The Present Implementation Situation of Covertly Stratified English Teaching in Junior Middle School
Firstly, students have a good acceptance for Covertly Stratified English Teaching, and most of them have improved their autonomous learning ability and self-confidence in English learning. Teachers give different guidance for students’ autonomous learning at different levels. For example, for students with a relatively solid foundation and good thinking quality, teachers more intend to give priority to their self-study, supplementing with guidance, and encouraging them to read more original reading materials such as Black Brin, which can tap their learning potential with English thinking cultivated; as for middle-level students, teachers will explain in depth the problems they do not understand in class; for students with poor foundation, in addition to simple, patient and meticulous explanation, teachers will let them learn to make full use of the peer resources around them and learn to ask others for help, which is also a kind of self-study ability suitable for them.
Secondly, most teachers have the teaching consciousness of Stratified Teaching and have adopted various hierarchical teaching methods. Adhering to the ―student-oriented‖ teaching concept, teachers respect students’ inpidual differences, and also make full use of a variety of teaching methods to meet their learning needs. Through the survey data, we can see that in the actual teaching, teachers have adopted persified hierarchical teaching methods in teaching organization, teaching materials, inpidual guidance, teachingactivities, etc.
Table 4.1 Students’ English Grades
Chapter 6 Conclusion
6.1 Summary
According to the analysis of the relevant data collected by means of questionnaire, classroom observation and interview, we obtain the current implementation situation of Covertly Stratified English Teaching in junior middle school: Covertly Stratified English Teaching is of great help to improve the students’ self-confidence and autonomous learning ability at different levels. Most teachers have the consciousness of Covertly Stratified Teaching, and their hierarchical teaching methods are persified; in form, they can meet the learning needs of students at different levels. However, most teachers lack of hierarchical pertinence in the design of teaching activities and fewer teachers can use the construction of heterogeneous groups as an efficient auxiliary teaching means of Covertly Stratified Teaching.
There are also some problems in the process of implementation: teachers’ understanding of Covertly Stratified Teaching mode is still not comprehensive enough, and the required professional teaching ability is also deficient. This leads to the emergence of problems such as lack of heterogeneous group construction, fewer stratified classroom activities and inaccurate stratification of questioning subjects. Teachers’ professional quality should also be improved with the improvement of teaching objectives.
In view of the problems found above, this study puts forward the following suggestions: firstly, English teachers should establish a correct concept of Covertly Stratified Teaching, focusing on ―covert‖, ―stratification‖ and ―heterogeneous group construction‖, put this teaching model into practice; secondly, English teachers should make great efforts to activate the teaching process and put the Covertly Stratified Teaching into practice in the key aspects such as stratifying lesson preparation, stratifyingquestioning subjects, enriching innovative and stratified teaching activities, implementing student-based teaching reflection and so on; in addition, Covertly Stratified Teaching also has higher requirements for teachers’ professional quality. In order to better implement it, teachers should improve their professional ethics and information literacy in line with the times to meet the learning needs of students at different levels.
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